The Weight of Optimism.
Because relationships, communities and societies don’t become beautiful on their own. This series is for those who are working overtime to repair, heal, protect, mend, support, improve and re-imagine the world around them, for others, in courageous, compassionate and inventive ways. May their centuries of unpaid emotional, intellectual, and physical labor be acknowledged and appreciated.
Island Mending:
In recent years, I have felt the painful sabotage of what I believed to be an optimistic America, the only country I have ever known. Now, I wonder if these years were coal mine canaries and not exceptions. Americans, after all, have had 400 years to realize the proposition that all men are created equal. What will it take to heal a nation? What does progress look like if the “normal” I have been hoping for is the problem itself? Who will rise to the occasion of doing the most difficult restorative work? I am imagining a rising feminine workforce that employs centuries of untapped experience in stitching, weaving, mending, quilting, negotiating, protecting, envisioning, and leading America into a nation with liberty and justice for all.
Love Letters to Every Woman in the World
What if I could make a portrait of every woman on earth? In a performative multi-media drawing project, I am attempting to do exactly that . I am finding these women in airports, on subways, through online searches, in travel photos and in my imagination. I do not want to miss a single one. The most transformative moment in this experience was when I hit the edge of all of the women I had imagined. As the project continues, it is joyous to find women I had not previously included: women with scars, military women, obese women, balding women, trans women, aging women…it is the practice of searching for difference. In doing so, I am learning what I should have always known: that “beauty” is either universal or irrelevant.
Shelter.
Without a place to rest, we would all just have to keep walking.
