Artist Statement

I make soft goods — quilts and sewn textiles. 

My work is motivated by color and pattern, and by the ability of fabric to behave like both a two-dimensional surface and a three-dimensional sculptural object. I use found and repurposed fabrics because of their universal resonance - we all have a relationship to cloth and therefore a shared responsibility to make better use of what already exists

My artmaking process is defined by intuition and improvisation, playing with the materials available to me. I seek secondhand fabrics—thrifted sheets, pillowcases, hand towels, even clothing—with strong color and texture. I cut blocks of fabric or use inherent aspects of a thrifted piece’s original form to dictate its place in a composition. For me, fabric is the most pure expression of color because the color is inherent to the material itself—through dyeing and weaving. I use these fabrics the way a hard-edge painter might use paint. A combination of machine sewing (for assembling blocks) and hand sewing (for quilting the surface) contributes a tension between crisp seams and textured handworked stitches. This creates a play between the rigidity of a grid and the softness of asymmetry and improvisation.

As an artist, it is important to me to make art as a counterbalance to the intense consumption and passivity that drives contemporary life. Artmaking is the mark that we can make, the gift that we can offer. It is a refusal to cede creation to hyperconsumption, capital, and automation.