Practices in Transformation: Grief, Gratitude, Love, and Time is an evolving body of work shaped by community participation, collective sharing, and communal emotional experiences.
View each element of the installation by using the links below or scrolling on.
About the Show:
In this exhibition, time breathes.
Visitors are invited to move gently through the space,
becoming both watchers and changers—
active and passive, present and reflected.
Time, as we know it, stretches and shrinks—
sometimes slow as deep long breath,
sometimes swift as flash of a memory.
We touch and are touched,
leave marks and are marked.
Here, those quiet truths take shape.
Some works will respond to your presence with or without your intent—
a shadow, a step, a breath will shift them.
Others will ask something more of you: a choice, a gesture,
a moment of stillness or interaction.
This is a space for pause, for feeling the weight and lightness of time, for reflecting on the unseen ways we move through the world— and how the world moves through us.
Safe Passage
A hanging sewn quilt-like installation of 434 facial tissues offers a portal for those entering and exiting the gallery. This threshold encourages visitors to wonder at materiality and what they are about to encounter. Thresholds in homes often contain a welcoming gesture and good-bye blessings, taking the form of a welcome rug or a good-bye plaque. In some cultures the threshold of a home is ornamented with symbols of clearing and protection. This quilt-inspired threshold offers a prompt of wonder - a transition into something new while also offering a message of wishing you well, wishing you safe passage through your life - it is the proverbial “watch out for deer and text me when you get home” gesture of love.
Kaleidoscope Skies: Mobiles In Blue
629 hand pinched formed earthenware clay bells,
terra sigillata surfaces, powder coated metal, braided wire, brass swivels
Individual mobiles approximately: 42 inches (height) x 18 inches (diameter)
Collective mobiles: 18 foot diameter circle arrangement
Kaleidoscope Skies: Mobiles in Blue is composed of 24 individual mobiles arranged in a circular formation surrounding the collaborative artpiece, The Colors of Grief: (un)Locked in Amber Waiting. The collection is a marker of two years of time, what I’ve come to know as my deep grief cycle. Hovering ten feet above the floor, people are invited to walk under and around the mobiles like a labyrinth, noticing their subtle movements that are unseen at first glance.
The hand pinched formed ceramic bells speak to sound, but yet, create no sound. I am continually interested in elements that contrast in some way, whether that is through something concrete like color harmonies or something more conceptual like bells that make no sounds. These create questions and prompts of curiosity for those who engage with the work.
Hawk Dreams Altarpiece
Acrylic on wood panels, gold thread, brass brackets and hinges, lights, community engagement
Altarpiece Painting open: 52.25 inches (4.667 feet high) x 72 inches (6 feet wide), Shelves are each 24 inches (2 feet long) x 4 inches (deep)
Hawk Dreams Altarpiece invites people to pause and remember a previous dream that has been forgotten or to create a new dream, then light a candle to honor that dream; nearly 300 candles were lit in its debut. Connecting to historical art, the altarpiece format creates a familiarity but shifts to be welcoming to all through its secular imagery.
For Comfort, For Holding: Infinite Comfort, Infinite Healing, Infinite Love
Hand braided strands of facial tissue (Puffs Ultra Soft ™), thread
Rugs: 7 feet long x 4 feet wide, Bench: 5 feet long x 18.5 inches wide x 17.25 inches high
Made from hand braided strands of sewn together facial tissues, these rugs offer respite, and are created following practices of historic rag braided rugs, which were used to add warmth and comfort to homes. In the gallery, these hand braided rugs and bench invite visitors to rest, sit, and lay down. While offering a soft, gentle space to rest, their surprising durability offers guests a chance to reconsider other presumptions.
Each linear strand was created by sewing together 12 facial tissues. Three of these strands were then braided, and subsequently hand-sewn together, with their ends carefully woven into each other. The extensive physical labor involved in crafting these rugs was intentionally performed by women, acknowledging the historical precedent of women undertaking such work, which often goes unappreciated and misunderstood in its intensity.
The Colors of Grief: (un)Locked in Amber Waiting
Facial tissue cast in resin with community contributed grief stitched tissues
Resin Cast 8 inches x 8 inches x 3 inches, entire piece: 48 inches high x 36 inches diameter
The Colors of Grief: (un)Locked in Amber Waiting is a collaborative artwork created by anyone who wishes to participate. Via social media and personal sharing, people are invited to sew strands of tissue or cloth handkerchiefs together using colors of thread, stitch patterns, and/or words and imagery representing their grief. This grief does not need to be named, only represented. Contributors mail their stitches to me at the project PO Box to be included in this piece. The piece is ongoing and will be shared in future locations. The centerpiece for this artwork is a tissue cast in amber colored resin resting on a pedestal like a sacred reliquary. The sewn lines of grief tissues are arranged in a nest-like shape below this centerpiece representing a gathering of collective grief.
Contribute to The Colors of Grief: learn more here
Passages of Transformation
Ironed pressed facial tissues, gold safety pins, monofilament, gold eye hooks, human and room air movements
2025 installation: 10 feet (high) x 10 feet (wide)
Passages of Transformation, a wall of ironed pressed facial tissues hung with gold safety pins on monofilament, moves with these subtle shifts of air, recording, responding to our movements, the gentle, the grand. On the first day, all tissues hang evenly spaced. With time and interaction, the tissues slide, gathering together and spreading apart. This piece is the physical embodiment of the transformation of a space and metaphorically of the transformations of a life.
Infinite Gratitude: Eleven Minutes of Gratitude
452 hand pinched formed earthenware pots, gold thread, gold eyehooks, gold wire brackets, gratitude, community contributed notes of gratitude on paper
14 foot diameter, individual pinch pots: 1 inch to 3 inches diameter, basins: 16 inches diameter
Each of the 452 pinch pots were formed while thinking of one person, one experience, one thing I was grateful for. I created a studio practice of taking 11 minutes to pinch these pots in gratitude, within that time 3-4 would be created. I teach this practice at every workshop. To begin in gratitude is to give the gift of presence to ourselves before we begin.
In the tree ring inspired arrangement, the gratitude pinch pots represent the softer lighter growth of early spring/summer; the golden thread represents the slower denser growth of late summer/fall - paralleling our periods of grief and loss.
Within each ring, the pinch pots are arranged in a scatter formation inspired by the theory of bubble universes with the intention of inspiring awe and wonder. When I move in gratitude, I move in awe and I marvel at the smallest of things.
People are invited to write notes of gratitude on paper and place them in the basins forming a collective gathering of gratitude. At the end of the debut showing of this piece, there were 325 notes of gratitude added to the basin.
Four-channel soundscape, 19-minute duration
Made in collaboration with Shane Leonard, this four-channel soundscape provides a grounding, wonder-guiding atmosphere that supports a soothing emotional experience.
Also available to listen or purchase via Bandcamp (link here)