Ceramics
I’ve been doing ceramics for a couple of years now. I started on the pottery wheel making functional wear. I love making mugs, bowls, and vases. More recently I started altering my thrown pieces adding an octopus tentacle or barnacles. The joy I found in sculptural elements on a functional piece has grown into a love of sculpture. I have always loved geology and the beach - I started making beach stone vases. I think of rocks as infinite in their experience of time compared to our fleeting human life. I think of rocks as witnesses to all that we are, watching over life for eternity. Rocks have a lot of symbolism and connection to place. We find agates, wishing rocks, heart rocks, or hag stones and we think of it as a sign. Rocks remind me to slow down, notice, look closely, find beauty, and breathe. My beach stones have developed into sculptural rock cairns - a symbol of guidance on a path or balance. Focusing on the symbolism of stones brought me to building hag stones as lucky charms or windows into the future. Many of my sculptures have barnacles stuck to them. My work carries a love of the sea. The tentacle might draw you in. The barnacle might spark your curiosity. Both the octopus and the barnacles relate to my identity as a homemaker. The octopus ever creative and curious is the most dedicated mother - tending her eggs tirelessly until they hatch and she dies. The barnacle in adolescent form floats around the ocean until it lands on its head and makes a home wherever that is. Stuck with some nature’s strongest glue the barnacle is a symbol of resilience often living in the harsh and varied intertidal zone. The sea is fascinating. It is as unexplored as space - so much we don’t know yet it sustains us with generating oxygen with it’s plant life, feeding us with it’s animal life, regulating our weather patterns, water systems, and environment through the water cycle, it is both harsh and nurturing.
Fiber
Fiber is in my blood. Some of my earliest memories of fiber are holding skiens of yarn on my arms while my mom wound balls. I remember her crocheting hats and knitting sweaters and socks so thick you couldn’t wear shoes over them. I remember the smell of lanolin as she carded the wool before spinning and the smell of wet wool as she washed it in bathtub. I have been exploring the fiber arts for as long as I can remember. I made clothes for my dolls as a girl. I made clothes for myself in high school. I leaned to crochet in high school and knit in college. I find the looping of yarn and clicking of needles meditative. It keeps my mind calm to keep my hands busy.
I started quilting in college. My first quilts were hand pieced and hand quilted. I stitched my way thorough all the rights of passage: heartbreaks, friends moving away, first babies, first weddings, and first homes. Quilting has always been a way of sharing love, caring for someone, showing gratitude, finding solace. Each stitch carries the energy of the maker into the future and surrounds the recipient in nurturing warmth. My more recent quilts have been community quilts. I brought dear friends together to make a quilt for a friend facing cancer - everyone contributing their love and energy to comfort our friend while she fought for her life. It gave us a way to do something meaningful when we felt helpless. After that quilt I brought women together around grief. With little or no skills women gathered to cut, sew, arrange, reminisce, laugh, and share in the act of reaching out and wrapping around someone who has experienced a loss. We did this for a woman whose husband died suddenly. I also facilitated a group of mothers to make a quilt for a fellow mother who had lost her son to suicide. We were able to bring the quilt to the funeral for attendees to put some stitches into the quilt because we are all apart of the thread that holds the world together. I make pillows, wall hangings, hot pads, coasters, clothing. My favorite part of sewing is the sharing of skills and time to make something that carries a story, a message, an intention into the future. I love celebrating this woman’s work as art. Celebrating fiber art as worthy of doing, sharing, giving, and having. A quilt can tell a story, share a memory, nurture a good night’s sleep, or be the stage for making memories on the beach, family picnic, or car trip. It’s an act of love. I remember the quilts my grandmothers and great grandmothers made. I had the honor of finishing quilts that my grandmother had not completed when she passed. I’m a practical and productive person. I love making art that has function and adding beauty to the home. Homemaking as an art, a skill, and a job that doesn’t get the credit it deserves. I consider myself a radical homemaker. Making the home beautiful, clean, welcoming, and nurturing is an act of independence and a rebellion against a consumerist culture. A home should be slow, relaxing, calm, and appreciated as a refuge. There is a person who has to work to make a place a home - a person who is both practical and creative, resourceful and productive.
Painting
I’m only an amateur painter, but I work to capture the landscapes that bring me awe. I hope to remind others to pause in the awe moments. Especially living in the northwest, I am routinely overwhelmed by the beauty of the landscape. The ocean, the mountains, the trees, the fog, the forests, the sunsets, and sunrises the beauty is endless. I’ve heard it said that we cannot save what we do not know. I want my work to be a reminder to preserve the natural beauty of this place. We have the opportunity or maybe the responsibility to care for and preserve this treasure.
