Mauser EcoHouse Foundation, January, 2025
Artist-in-Residence Final Show
During an artist residency at the Mauser EcoHouse Foundation in Parritas, Costa Rica, I focused on observing nature and experimenting with new art forms. The final show was a meditation on life, death, ancestry, and how to be tender amid transformation. It was a chance for me to be experimental and unresolved, which are very difficult things! I learned that it is okay to be in a learning and download phase, and to not know everything. :)
I had been experimenting with the idea of a naturescape in which my ancestors are imagined cocooned in care and safety. I am a descendant of enslaved people who were kidnapped and shipped to foreign lands. There is so much terror in my ancestry, and I am inspired to explore the softness and vitality that must have existed alongside that terror. Nature is a model for dreaming a space apart from annihilation, where care and creation abound. The natural world is one of undeterred power, of consistent flourishing in the face of destruction. I am inspired by the wisdom of life and its capacity to heal from traumas through collective endurance.
What can we learn from new growth, individual strands weaving together for a stronger hold, the sun’s touch throughout the day? At the Mauser EcoHouse Foundation, I spent time surrounded by nature, watching, listening, and feeling the pattern of life in order to reflect it in my artwork. I made an installation inspired by nature’s patterns, its movement and stillness, and the subtle ways that life sustains itself. Like the natural world, my ancestors chose life even when surrounded by death. I want to create my art in partnership with nature to heal the past and imagine new sustainable ways of existing. And by learning how to choose care, I can heal myself as well.
collage made with gel block prints and found driftwood; knit cocoon
knit cocoon; collage made with gel block prints and found driftwood
collage made with gel block prints and found driftwood
collage made with gel block prints and found driftwood
knit cocoon, cyanotype, kanekalon braiding hair, jewelry wire
knit cocoon, cyanotype, kanekalon braiding hair, jewelry wire
knit cocoon, cyanotype, kanekalon braiding hair, jewelry wire
hand sculpture made from jewelry wire and fabric
knit cocoon; mobile made from needle felted sculptures, cyanotypes, turmeric anthotype prints, found objects (including driftwood and banana tree bark), jewelry wire
detail of mobile - needle felting on banana tree bark using human hair and dyed wool roving
mobile made from needle felted sculptures, cyanotypes, turmeric anthotype prints, found objects (including driftwood and banana tree bark), jewelry wire; collage made from gel block prints and driftwood; knit cocoons
mobile made from needle felted sculptures, cyanotypes, turmeric anthotype prints, found objects (including driftwood and banana tree bark), jewelry wire
detail of mobile - needle felted sculpture of flower on vine