Abstracting the act of adornment and utilizing domestic craft materials, I’m starting a conversation around historical associations of how and where women work and analyzing the role of gendered items in American tattoo culture. Through my work, I break down the mechanical process of a tattoo by precisely poking straight-pins dressed in beads into sculpted foam, fixed in a layer of resin. In this method of working, I am treating the surface of my material to function as human flesh, while the underlying form serves the muscularity and inner workings of the human body.

In narrowing my focus on the mechanics and balance of the body, I am removing a familiarity associated with a gendered and posed figure. By means of sculpture, I am abstract the body to its essential points of balance further discovering the equilibrium between the impulse of adornment and the rhythmic patterns in nature. In this process I am further questioning and discovering the dichotomy between beauty and pain; an act of adornment resulting from a puncturing process.

During this exact time in history where distress and uncertainty are rampant, I have been turning to art practices that settle the mind in an attempt to meditate on this period of pause. This has caused a personal breakthrough, therefore I am transitioning the intent of my practice to be more internal and for my self rather than calculated to please the public. With limited material at my disposal, I am utilizing basic brush and ink to further dive into the significance of the spiral within nature as I am painting abstract representations of our earth elements. My focal point has now switched to observing the organic movement of the atmosphere around the body rather than the mechanics and physics of the moving person.