thread

It can feel uncomfortable to deeply examine ourselves, to tenderly hold our pain and meet our fragility with curiosity and kindness. But for me this exploration is the beginning of the course of our recovery.

I examine the process of healing through the contemplative art of wrapping. I confront my urge to distract away from stillness and thought. With each circular motion I explore concepts of repair, mending, loss and grief. This becomes meditative, a continual motion both deliberate and simple, which enables an unmeasured examination into my emotional ecosystem. Through this practice, I build intricate installations of repurposed materials and embroidery thread with heavy emphasis on color and composition. These finished pieces resemble artifacts, or specimens; fragments of a psyche. However, as they are time capsules of my emotional growth, my process of healing is still in motion.

This work is rooted in embodied healing, growing out of a period of extended grief after caretaking and losing both my mother and father and the sudden loss of my mentor. This at the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic, when all of us were grappling with fear, confusion, pain and isolation. The wrapping practice became a method for being present with – and thus working through – these powerful, complicated, human emotions.

Through my art of thread binding, I play with tension and release, internally and externally, and strike a soothing balance that is said to be visceral. I engage with parts of myself that beg to be heard, to be reunited and restored. As I do this, I inevitably meditate on the parts of each of us that need reconnection and healing. To be on the path of growth, we need to accept our own as well as our collective vulnerability. Can we hold our discomfort, fear, and loss tenderly as we would a hurt child? Can we hold each other’s in the same way? My work gently prompts these questions with curiosity and reacts to them with care and compassion.