3 POEMS

July 2022

1.
I AM A SHARK IN A POOL AND A FLOATY IN THE OCEAN

2.
A perfect land that he seeks after
No mistakes from the puppet master
World that never felt disasterA place that lasts is made of plaster

3.
Ride the train

Half a brain

Link on a chain

Sitting down

The shaking clown

Knows my name

AMERICAN DREAM

June 2022

The idea that independence stands above harnessing relationships

The misconception that efficiency has more positive effects than negative ones

The american dream is earning enough time to do nothing

RATDOG BOYFRIEND GIRLFRIEND

June 2022

Ratdog is an ambiguous animal who remains in its free primal state while being a part of a human family. His family consists of two human characters, who act as Boyfriend and Girlfriend. This scene depicts a child-like idea of a utopian world. Care without responsibility and harmony of species. The couple express elements of individual taste while also touching on the “boyfriend and girlfriend” archetypes in their aesthetic. They conform to the standard normative “couple” many of us grew up familiar with or desiring on some level. Ratdog also has toylike qualities, barring three style options on his side, to appeal to anyone and be adaptable to any occasion.

DREAM REALITY

June 2022

This crochet human has two faces. A large flat fractured face hides a more neutral head which more properly fits the body. Looking from the back the viewer can see, the neutral head is holding the large flat face in its arms, whereas from the front the large face appears as the body's only head. The large face is simply a menacing illusion, created in the neutral being's mind, yet everything the neutral head sees is through the lense of a larger flat face, and from the neutral head's perspective, the face is more real and impending. This represents my relationship with mental illness and the dream world. Sometimes not understanding where the line between dream and reality is drawn, and not being able to see the world or myself clearly when in a depressive bout. The dream world takes the fear, depression, trauma, emptiness or any intense feelings and/or difficulties I am dealing with in the sensory world, and presents them to me as living beings I can face instead of invisible anxieties I cannot fix.

BINKIE

May 2022

This crying child is overwhelmed. Filled with emotion from all the things in the world they notice, not understanding how to use the images in their mind, not seeing anyone who would ever care, and even if they might, not knowing how to show them anyway. The only way binkie can express their interests and point of view is to leave their human body and become the entities which fascinate them.

IF I WERE A WOMAN IT WOULD TAKE ALL DAY

May 2022

This woman embodies the elements of femininity which I am attracted to. Clothes beyond function, an unconventionally shaped garment which envelopes the torso and face. The face is expressing fear, excitement, and wonder, as a little thing in a big world. Quilted pants bring the effortless beauty of my bed to the stage of my life, long nails because I am sharp, need to protect myself, and have no reason to work. No makeup unless it's face paint or bright lipstick. If I was a woman, and maybe I would like to be for just a day, I would be like a diamond floating around, eating ripe fruit and reading on my porch, filling my home with gold chachkies just to watch them collect dust. This piece is fashionable, stylish, dangerous, and effortless.

Material: Paper mache, fabric, yarn, felt, beads, acrylic nails

DOLLS DOLLS DOLLS

April, 2022

These crochet dolls were inspired after a visit to Flying Shuttle, an establishment near my studio which conducts art classes for adults with disabilities. Seeing the work by these artists, I felt more inspired by and connected to the ideas, materials, and styles than I have previously experienced looking at art. Being a neurodiverse person functioning in a neurotypical world, I often feel as though my thoughts and ideas will be lost in translation or misinterpreted. DOLLS DOLLS DOLLS touches on feelings surrounding identity and what a mental disability feels like in an able bodied existence. Hidden neurological differences have stuck me between two worlds: the neurotypical one which I occupy physically because I am an able bodied person, and the neurodiverse one I live in mentally. Both worlds provide me with important insight and information, neither feeling truly like my place.

HOME IS WHERE

April 2022

This paper mache sculpture includes fabric elements including curtains, felt finger puppets, hair decorations, and fabric collage feet. This work was created during a long pursuit of practicing being more comfortable in vulnerability and transparent about who I am. I have become aware that any normal amount of sharing about myself will bring me to tears because of the amount I withhold from others. I am pursuing the certainty that I am as real as the humans I see, instead of just eyes looking out a window, I am a body with a history and am able to be perceived. The feet on this figure read “home is where” referencing word art found in the home decor section of chain stores like Marshalls. Instead of continuing the sentence into something hokey and what I find to be the makings of a dystopian family, or robot family pretending to be humans, I end the sentence. This is to express the strong feelings I have had throughout my life of not coming from or belonging anywhere.

INSIDE INSIDE OUTSIDE OUTSIDE

March 2022

This collage illustrates the categories of space which I see as the boundaries to which humans are confined to by our own perception. Inside Inside represents thoughts, feelings, food when it's eaten, bones and organs. Everything we are unable to see with the human eye but is measurable in some way. Inside; the indoors, Outside; the outdoors. Outside Outside is what we consider to be nature and most untouched by human influence.

Dimensions: 42” X 30”
Material: Paper Collage

Watch animation of collage ︎︎︎

INFANTILE GUILT

February 2022

These three baby dolls symbolize the process of regression sparked by feelings of guilt. The mask of indifference they wear on their heads, hiding their feelings in a deeper place, making it more difficult to see a way through whatever they may be facing. Here I give a child-like comforting vessel to hold shame, guilt, fear, self doubt, and all other self inflicted suffering.

Dimensions: 15” X 7” each
Material: Fabric, felt, yarn

CREATE, PERFORM, PLAY

January – June 2022

These paper mâché counterparts I made to represent a need, and as a trophy of self discovery. I have been unhappy for much of my adolescence and adult life, not knowing what I needed to function well. Since I have started making art, everything in my life has started making sense. This reacquaintance with feelings of purpose and inspiration have been emotional and revealing. This work depicts the actions which I know for certain give me these feelings above all else, and reminds me of my function on earth.

Dimensions: Create:17” X 8” Perform: 26” X 25” Play: 14” X 30”

Material: paper, yarn, fabric, wire

SECURITY CAMERA OF MY LIFE

Nov 2021 – March 2022

This multimedia knit wall piece brings in felt, yarn, fabric, paint. This Knit and felt wall piece was made to act as a neutral observer of my process and creations. The knit grid was modeled based on my memory of what a security camera screen looks like. I believe re-creating a representation of an existing object from memory instead of crafting the object while referencing it, allows a new dimension to be brought into the world. A dimension between physical reality and mental reality. Security Camera Of My life depicts an abstracted version of how I move through my day and what that looks like though my eyes, through the eyes of my creation

Dimensions: 56” X 96”

Materials: yarn, felt, wood, fabric

ISLAND VACATION

Dec 2021 – Jan 2022

While on a trip with my partner's family to The Big Island of Hawaii, where I had once lived, I wanted to create a piece out of found materials from the island. In the past living on the island, I faced many harsh realities based on the circumstances I was under. While revisiting, I found myself safe, and was able to look with a new perspective at the locals as well as tourists on the Island. These colorful, happy, and festive balaclavas represent witnessing a phenomenon involving invisibility of individuality, facade of sameness, and distance between the locals and tourists.

Dimensions: group of small heads: 12” X 27” group of large heads: 20” X 28”

Materials: Paper, yarn, wire

MASKS

Jan 2022

This collage reveals the human landscape in my mind. A mask is an object and symbol I repeatedly use in my work, and here it is shown in different styles, displaying a hierarchy. I used this symbol before being aware that "mask" is a term for an autistic coping mechanism, which I realized is a prevalent behavior throughout my life. Here I use the symbol commenting on social hierarchies and contradictions. Powerful figures are unknowable, but hiding is weak? Oppressors have control, yet less knowledge of the oppressed, whereas the oppressed are knowledgeable about the oppressor.

Dimensions: 28” X 22”

Materials: Paper, crayon, Pen, silkscreen prints

THE RICH, THE POOR, THE FORTUNATE

2021

These wall hanging crochet and fabric forms are energy renderings based on my aesthetic associations with the archetypes of rich and poor people in media. The character I call “the fortunate” is free from the weight of these financial traps and depicts an unencumbered individual, absent of shame caused by their economic standing. The rich is the circular form, the poor the square, and the fortune is the long one.

FROGGY

2021

Froggy is an energy caricature of a performer stuck in servitude, like a waiter or cruise line dancer. He is physically expressive, reserved, and talented, yet unnoticed when his performance ends.

Dimensions: 16” X 8”

Material: Fabric, paint, yarn

ENERGY BALL FOR SAM

2021

This Fabric wall piece was made as a gift for my partner Sam Shorr. It stands out from my previous work because it lacks darkness and displays a joyous part of life, love. The image represented began with a Macbook computer's “Photobooth” image taken in the “light tunnel” effect. This was initially transferred into a pen and crayon illustration, then turned into this fabric wall piece.

PAPER PEOPLE; SERIES 1

2021

The Golfer, The Music Lover, The Bachelor, Stabby Child

These paper sculptures were made using grocery bags as a base, then tissue paper as a surface layer. This material allows me to add details using ink, which is normally only shown in my illustration work. Each of these paper people includes some type of fabric or yarn accessory, bringing together two focuses of mine into the same world; fibers and illustration. This group represents memories of the adults around me as a child, showcasing what their energies looked like to me as a collective. I call this “caricature energy”, meaning a combination and exaggeration of what a group of people from memory felt like in my mind, rather than depicting what they individually were like, and exploring why they were mentally grouped together. Golfer is a combination of dads who relate through physical activity, Music lover and Stabby Child a homeschool mother and child counterpart, Bachelor a man who was at the event but I never knew why.

Dimensions: The Golfer: 18” X 21” The Music Lover: 26” X 14” The Bachelor: 12” X 26” Stabby Child: 17” X 15”

Material: paper, fabric, yarn

SOFT BOXER

2021

Soft boxer is a super human-like character created with powers which I have desired. Soft Boxer furiously fights with punches, but no matter how violently Boxer fights, they’re soft fists will never be hurt, and they themself cannot hurt anything. This form is based on my experiences of domestic abuse and feelings of being misunderstood as a child. Being so soft yet so full of anger. Wanting to fight while feeling as though I had no control.

Dimensions: 15.5" wide, 19" tall, 14" deep

Material: fabric, paper, airbrush, embroidery thread

SMOOTH RENDERING OF THE JAGGED COMPLEX BEING

2021

This knit piece with fabric elements continues on the theme of a mask, a strong symbol in my life relating to autism and gender. A driving force of this work was experimentation with material and process. The use of newer learned techniques like embroidery, weaving and natural dying, are combined with more familiar ones such as knitting, hand stitching and machine sewing.

Dimensions: 24" X 57"

Material: yarn, fabric, dye, embroidery thread

GOOD TIMES EMPORIUM, ANAMATRONIC HUMAN

2021

This fabric wall sculpture combines flat and stuffed elements, keeping it between the 2 and 3 dimensional world. The energy expressed here is from memories of Good Times Emporium, an indoor amusement park which I attended several birthdays at as a child. This disorienting, smoke filled, and dimly lit, establishment combined the energies of adult's and children's vices. In many places like this the use of animatronic robots are used as entertainment, their endless repetition of motion made me think of them as tortured souls or dead sinners. The slightly larger than human form in the piece is representational of an animatronic presence, forever trapped between existences. Not human, alone, flat yet imposing. This work is made entirely of fabric elements.

Dimensions: 51"X 92"

Material: fabric, wood, embroidery thread

PUPPET HOUSE

2021

These puppet dolls were made to be friends, and to tell stories. They were created by hand using fabric, sock scraps, and stamps. I always had stuffed animals on this scale as a child which I deeply cared for. Now more fascinated with humans, I create these friends to love and carry. The house they live in is made from plywood, paper bags wheat pasted, and curtains created from scrap fabric material. This house acts to the viewer as a stage for the puppets to be witnessed.

Dimensions: 28" Wide, 42" tall, 6.5" deep

Material: Plywood, fabric, wheat paste, paper, paint, embroidery thread

MOTHER

2021

This large scale doll-like form began by wanting to express the energy that two smaller puppet dolls I made previously, Mi and Frend, had on a larger scale, and duplicate elements of the process used in their creation. This work has now taken on a matriarchal presence to my other forms, combining my aesthetic observations of the archetype, the “mother”, with energies created in this imaged world. I used a range of techniques beyond machine sewing for the creation of this work, which include sculpting the base with paper, hand stitching the components together, paint

Dimensions: 36" X 78"

Material: fabric, paint, embroidery thread, paper, tape, airbrush

SOFT AS BLOOD

2020

My body is soft, my face is smooth and round, and my opinions often kept reserved for digestion. I’m uncomfortable that I look like a woman. My mind is dark and unsettling, creating images that scare me. My brain is harsh, my thoughts unforgiving, and my words sharply precise when I choose to let them out. I feel so at peace in this genderless mind, but only few have met me. When I was younger I loved to bleed. Blood was the only force strong enough to harshen my cheeks. Now as I grow and become more stable, I express my genderless self with other reds, as a reminder that I can exist just as human, and I dont have to bleed to show I am.

This macrame sculpture combines bodily elements to represent the form of expression which I once relied on before I was creating art. The melted plastic panels sewn together represent a transparency which I am starting to gain in my life as I gain confidence. I want to hold up the blood behind this “glass” as an object of beauty because it is pain and these have never existed independently.

Dimensions 7’ 10” X 3’ 2”

Material: cotton rope, yarn, fabric, plastic, hemp, nylon rope, paint, and trash materials

MY FRIEND YOUR FRIEND WEARS A MASK

2020

The creation of this wall piece began by wanting to capture a perspective I don't get to see in the physical world. Seeing only the hands and face of someone is rare in most circumstances but what receives most of my attention. I think by removing the body it allows free unfiltered movement instead of connecting action to person. The hands looking back into the face as close friends offer a reflection of not only the self but of what is to be. This process led me to a more direct self expression. Here I reflect the dark ominous parts of myself within the context of a joyous activity. I celebrate the power I feel in being a soft cynic. The theme of a mask is a recurring theme in my work since I started keeping a sketchbook in high school. The mask is such a powerful symbol to me because of how much I have withheld behind my own masks throughout my life. The mask I create is round, soft, unaffected, unapproachable, unknowable and always in action.

Dimensions: 30” X 48”

Material: yarn, fabric, wood, paint

DEPARTMENT STORE WALKATHON

2020

In this wall piece I express the elements of luxury in everyday life which I admire. I am fascinated by the objects in stores regardless of whether they were created to manipulate, sooth, excite, or elevate us. In thrift stores I am inspired by the possibilities of discovery or renewal. In bulk goods stores like Ocean State Job Lots I am fascinated by what products are made for us and how the people behind these products express their vision through labels. I find this search luxurious. Picking up whatever I choose, deciding whether it is worth collecting, or if I can just take what it has already fed me in knowledge and leave it behind. Luxury is one of a kind and having one of each kind.

Dimensions:

70” X 44”

Material: fabric, paint, wood

LUCY’S PALACE

2020

A piece to express a desire to connect to my heritage and more specifically my grandmother. The formation of domestic scenes sewn together with many small pieces was intended to reflect methods and aesthetics commonly used in traditional Colombian tapestries. I wanted to attribute this to my grandmother's life work with textiles. Though she does not make artistic tapestries, she has worked as a seamstress for her whole life to sustain herself and her family. Moving to the United States to receive better care for one of her disabled children, she opened Lucy’s Place, a sewing shop in Miami. I see pieces of myself in her connection to material and practicality of life. I hope to express this connection I feel to her with this tapestry. The use of a domestic scene inside of an abstract form that is reminiscent of clouds and heaven is not only to touch on our practicality but also to reference her deep religious faith and connection to the material world.

Dimensions: 4’X 9”

Material: fabric, embroidery thread

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