I bring together materials and processes that express the union of humanity and the physical world, most often textile traditions in collaboration with botanical material. We all have a deep historical and lived experience with cloth - powerful and ever present. Plants and cloth both represent specific and symbolic connections to place, time, people and memory. Leaves are infinitely replenish-able, uniquely exquisite, ubiquitous to the point of being taken for granted - remarkable, yet invisible. Plants connect us directly to the land, grounding us in our understanding of our place on the planet.
Whether stitching, drawing, planting seeds, or harvesting, my hands echo the gestures made by thousands of hands over thousands of years and I feel connected to the lineage of people working with textiles, plants and the land. Stitching, like horticulture, can be functional - a technical solution to join materials/a means of survival - or both can be done purely in service of the soul, lifting the spirit through beauty and wonder.
In addition to my studio work, I’m an Assistant Professor and direct the fiber program at Virginia Commonwealth University, and I teach workshops domestically and abroad. My work has been featured by the Observer, the Guardian, the Sunday Times South Africa, Garden & Gun, Flower, Virginia Living, and Embroidery Magazines. My work is in the permanent collections of the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, NY, United States Embassy to Sri Lanka, Colombo, the Kalmthout Arboretum & Botanical Gardens in Belgium, Grace Farms Foundation in New Canaan, Ct and is currently on view at the ambassadorial residencies in Tangiers, Algeria and Dhaka, Bangladesh. Recent professional projects and publications include collaborations with Domestika, L'Occitane en Provence and the New York Botanical Garden. A public installation in collaboration with the AKG Museum can be seen year-round in Buffalo, NY.