I am currently working with bodies and abstraction to process death, health, mourning and grief. I make abstract drawings that convey movement and personal narrative and translate them into quilts and costume. My drawing, quilts and costumes represent an awareness of the body that I developed through many years of formal dance training and somatic techniques.

After a funeral, a friend remarked how our recently buried friend’s body is sitting in a box underground and I realized I had never truly considered that the body still exists after death (that my body will exist after I die).The living body starts a process of decay similar to the decay of the deceased (full of embalming fluids that slow down this process) but where organs and joints stop working and the physical demands of life become more difficult. While the body is constantly fighting to keep itself alive it can’t help but slowly work itself to death.This tension of living while moving towards death has created a place of productivity for me. From making bodies that represent this distortion that happens and working with textiles to provide comfort to the user while obscuring the body I have been exploring how to evoke bodies that are not present and how to represent what remains in their absence.

One aim of my work is to capture the feeling of wanting to wrap yourself up in blankets and be hidden from the outside world. Transitioning from making full body costumes into quilts is a way to convey that feeling by looking at an object most people have experiences with (a quilt) without having to wear a more foreign object (a costume). I have developed an abstract language with mark making that represents personal narrative and movements while still remaining open to the viewer’s interpretation and I have begun transposing those shapes and marks onto quilts and costume in order to have a physical engagement with the abstract imagery and the personal history the language represents.