ARTIST STATEMENT:  Gather (Sacred Conversation)


Thread cascades from my floral tapestries as if nature is unraveling.

Combining floral photography, woven tapestry, thread & traditional handcraft techniques, I make textile “gardens” where human-scaled flowers, symbolizing both our humanity & the natural world are coming undone.

My deep concerns for our well-being as a culture - with ongoing injustice, growing lack of empathy, fragmentation & poor stewardship of our environment weigh heavily on me & informs these large-scale gardens.

The garden tapestries represent the blurred, interconnectedness of our natural & social environments – all fragile, weakened, in need of care & solutions for repair.

Within the tapestries, beauty & destruction often hold the same space.  Dismantled areas speak to how these environments have been coming undone “one thread at a time”, while additive threads, stitching, dyeing & patchwork are intended as gestures of mending.

The handwork is symbolic of the human choice, empathetic action & difficult labor needed to ensure the wellbeing & thriving for all living beings within our collective, shared home.

In Gather, flowers interact with one another as if having a conversation, sharing similarities to the Sacra Conversazione paintings of the Renaissance period. 

Using pollinators in the floral imagery is intentional, symbolic of these flowers being “good neighbors” to bees, butterflies & other fauna.  Flowers with bent stems, missing petals, faded blossoms & leaves with insect holes sit alongside perfect blooms, defining the garden as an inclusive space.

Hand-dyed thread falls from the bottom hem of the tapestry indicating the garden patch is uprooted.  The roots, representing a vulnerable, life-critical part of a plant are exposed & perilously dangling without proper place or sustenance to survive – literally, hanging by a thread.

With amplified, human-sized scale, the flowers are viewed “face-to-face”, giving visibility to the often-overlooked inhabitants of our natural world, while cultivating a moment to reflect on their beauty, fragility & consider our place in community with them & one another.

A delicate & interdependent relationship between humankind & the earth is what Gather points to; nature as the “good neighbor” among us, part of a vulnerable community in need of human partnership & protection.

Gather is also a call to come together, people & planet; a step towards “replanting” & reimagining a new “garden” or world. Perhaps, a renewed sense of place where reciprocity, care, equity, understanding, kindness, love is cultivated - & all have potential to fully flourish.

The act of rebuilding anything significant is empathetic & endurance-based work. It could start simply in a tapestry garden – one flower, one conversation, one stitch, one thread at a time.