Hi everyone, I hope this newsletter finds you well. I haven’t been out adventuring much, but I have been making new work that feels exciting, and I’ve spent quite a bit of time refocusing and refining my artist statement, which has taken me a bit of time. More on that later for my generous paid subscribers. I’m about to have about a month off of summer vacation because #teacherlife, so my next goal is to finally make my website a bit easier on the eyes and more personable, record some process videos for my patrons, and hopefully make one or two larger pieces for my pie in the sky future dream exhibition I’d like to title: Satellites: We Have Been Out There. I’m working on a future essay to delve into that concept more.
In my last newsletter I mentioned how I’ve decided to really focus on my primary color palette in an effort to create a more cohesive body of work. I’m really satisfied with how it turned out. Because I’m a child of the 80s and early 90s, this reminds me of button candy, where you end up eating more paper than candy.
Maybe I should number these as a part of a series, Satellite 1, 2, 3 etc. I’m not in the mood to give these quirky twee titles like some other work. I’ve been challenging myself to rely more on thread to carry my work rather than patchwork or appliqué.
People frequently compliment my work as being very patient, which I don’t really identify with, in my work at least. This piece is larger than normal for me, and was made this size simply because I thrifted the frame for very cheap. This particular golden mustard thread by Yokota Daruma only comes in single strand, and halfway through this I was frustrated for having set the task. I’m pleased with how it turned out though.
Making these smaller works has been a pleasing way to try out new ideas without the risk of commitment like the piece above. I’ve been thinking of orrery imagery (I was obsessed with Aughra’s orrery room from The Dark Crystal as a kid), and have been trying to develop a broader vocabulary in my work for my Satellites. These are exciting, and feel like I’m on to something. The phrase cosmic cave paintings rolls around in my head.
Aughra’s Orrery for reference if you weren’t a kid traumatized by the skeksis.
I’m feeling pretty excited about this subtle change in my work. And I think my most recent statement about the work is getting closer and closer to what I’m trying to convey:
My work is mark making in thread. On grounds of antique indigo, I build dense fields by hand: packed dots, netted grounds, radiating dashes that accumulate slowly into something between textile and map.
I’m drawn to systems that render invisible relationships visible: orreries, cartography, satellite transmission maps, protective marks drawn to exact rules whose meaning stays sealed inside them. Each is a diagram of connection. Bodies held in orbit, intention bound into geometry, signal paths arcing between distant points. In my work, medallions become celestial bodies or transmission nodes, and the lacework between them becomes the connective tissue: gravity, route, signal.
I work with the urge to fill the entire field. But filled space is not uniform space. Density becomes my drawing tool. Open netting breathes, packed marks press forward, and the material transforms into a new terrain. What emerges are charts of imagined systems, night cities seen from above, mechanisms of unseen orbits, recorded one mark at a time, at the speed of the hand.
All these works are available on my website here. Also, if you’re in the USA, updated tariff regulations have finally forced me to accommodate, and so now you will be required to prepay your tariff fees at checkout. This is a real shitty situation. But at least transit should go more smoothly.
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