Temporary, 2021
A Mother and Her Daughter, 2020
House/Home, 2020
Our memories attach themselves to people, places, and things. They live forever within objects that cannot talk. Our memories replay within our minds and through stories retold, changing the slightest each time.
Healing my trauma means that for me, I am reopening these memories often. This reopening allows me to look at the difficult moments within my childhood with compassion and acceptance. Healing my trauma means that when I remember a moment that was deeply painful, it no longer feels as though I am reliving the trauma within my body.
Memories become just that. Memories.
As I find peace, I am reminding myself of the moments of love and laughter. The moments of gentle support. Memories of happy tears. And while there are still many moments I must continue to process and work through, I am reminding myself that there was good with the bad.
There Was Love, 2020
Much of the work I make revolves around the concept of my family's struggle with addiction, domestic abuse, and loss. My goal through these works are to show that even while I grew up living among addiction and abuse, my family still had moments of pure love. Whether that was supported through our grandparents or the moments of stress free sobriety with our parents, my siblings and I always had each other.
Choosing fibers as my source of medium for this project started solely based on the history of the domesticity of textiles and relating it to my subject matter. As I began to create more of the illustrations, I realized that there is a soft nature and feelings of comfort that come with using the medium. These feelings are something that are important to a child, and something I searched for as a teen.
My illustrative process is to show the carefree joy one experiences as a child. As a teen I lost that sense, but as I grow and heal from my past experiences, as well as my inherited trauma, I am finding it easier and easier to tap back into that carefree nature, as well as valuing the importance of that emotion. Working with these images has allowed me to look back at my childhood in a positive manner, and honor the fact that my parents did the best that they could with the knowledge they had.
Colors Of Abuse 2018-19
Colors of Abuse is an embroidered series which explores the lasting impact that domestic abuse leaves behind on both the survivor and the family. Through this series I will be listening to survivors stories of living through an abusive relationship and embroidering the injuries they may have acquired while in that relationship. With that being said, DV/IPV is often more that just physical marks left on the skin. The mental and emotional scars of abusive relationships leave a far greater impact on the survivor and are often the scars that go unnoticed and unheard.
The purpose of Colors of Abuse is to bring awareness to the topic of domestic abuse and intimate partner violence, by hearing first hand stories from survivors.