Studio

In The Studio

My studio spaces have changed many times over the years, and those spaces have, in turn, changed me and my work. Below are some snapshots from my studio spaces over the last several years, as far back as my first studio space in Washington, DC, summer 2015.

Check back soon for more updates!

Spring 2023

Fall 2022

Summer 2022

Over the summer I revisited documentation of my body and X-rays before, during, and after surgery, and used those images as reference materials for a variety of painting exploration. In addition to the body, I began also depicting plants (house plants, backyards, natural landscapes in photographs) much more consciously as central parts of the compositions. While the works were based on actual imagery, the compositions took on a more imagined and sometimes illustrative tone.

Spring 2022

In the late Spring of 2022 I rediscovered my love of painting. Before investing in large canvases for these paintings, I decided to start with what I already had in the studio: wood. I gessoed a few large pieces of wood and began painting scenes from the actual footage of my surgery and surgeons' tools, the bedroom where I spent months recovering, and X-rays of my body taken before, during, and after surgery.

WINTER 2021

After the solo exhibition was mounted in mid-September, my studio was a huge mess. But later in December, with a little time off from work, I cleaned up the space and started working on some new embroideries and smaller drawings, which became inspiration and material for later printmaking experiments.

Spring / Summer 2021

In the spring and through the summer of 2021, my studio was constantly changing to accommodate the scale and variety of projects that I was working to bring together for my solo exhibition at Arlington Arts Center. The studio experiments I engaged in were broad; I worked in drawing, painting, embroidery, performance, ceramic sculpture, and installation.

See the finished woks and learn more about the exhibition here: Body, Joy, Cage, Scar.

Winter 2020

In December of 2020 I was invited to create an experimental performance for a short residency at VisArts in Rockville, MD. The piece incorporated porcelain sculptures, embroidery pieces, an old ballet costume, a model spine, mobility aid devices, and a variety of other props that I interacted with in a variety of ways during multiple experimental performance trials in the VisArts gallery space.

Spring 2020

Before the whole world shut down due to Covid-19, I was already isolated because of a long, slow recovery from my 13-level spinal fusion surgery. Once I had the energy to sit up on my own for 30 minutes or even an hour at a time, I began working in a makeshift, at-home studio that I set up in my parents' home just prior to surgery. I was limited by energy, strength, and significant pain, so my work had to adapt accordingly. I made small clay bone-like shapes while performing my daily walking exercises, created small drawings in my sketchbook in bed, traced my body's shape over and over again in an old bathroom mirror, and I began using my projector to translate stills from a video of my surgery onto cotton fabric. The projector helped me to work very quickly, which was important because sitting in a chair was something I couldn't do for long periods of time. The work I made in this home studio became a starting point for a major shift in my work where I have since been investigating the structure and anatomy of my physical body, and my relationship to my body while depending on the care of others, and healing and caring for myself.

Fall / Winter 2019

October - December 2019

Summer - Fall 2019

June - September 2019

Summer - Fall 2018

In late summer 2018 I was awarded a long term residency at the Arlington Arts Center. I moved into my new studio in the late summer and continued my investigations with fiber-based materials on a smaller scale. The pieces I created in the summer-fall of 2018 were the start of my altered blanket series, which is ongoing. In January of 2019, two pieces from this series were included in a group exhibition titled "Over, Under, Forward, Back" which was written about in multiple publications, including The Washington City Paper.

Fall 2017 - Spring 2018

In September of 2017, I was invited back to Arlington Arts Center for a second short term residency for nine months. I shared the space with Jen Noone and we discovered an awesome connection between our work in the themes and explorations that guided our work. During the first part of this residency I made a lot of sculptural work with plaster casts, chicken wire, crocheted blankets, and donated fabric, and wood.

Summer 2017

For about 5 months starting in the summer of 2017 I worked out of a gorgeous studio at Edgewood, the oldest existing artist warehouse in Washington, DC. This place had an incredible energy to it, as it should; artists such as Tara Donovan and Martin Puryear worked out of these same walls. You could feel the energy shift like entering a portal as soon as you walked through the street door. In this space, I developed the start of a new series, Gradient, which was later exhibited at the Anacostia Arts Center in Washington, DC.

Fall 2016

My second studio was a short-term residency at Arlington Arts Center in Arlington, VA. During this time, I used a lot of the leftover donated textiles collected for my previous installation (Stretch, 2015) as materials to explore a variety of new techniques and approaches. The residency culminated in my largest work to date, ROYGBIV (2017), which is on view and permanent loan in the atrium of the Arlington Arts Center.

Summer 2015

My very first studio was a summer sublet at Jackson Art Center in Washington, DC. In those short few months, I worked on an installation for Art All Night (Nuit Blanche) DC, curated by Ariana Austin. The finished installation, Stretch (2015) was over 300 ft long, and since its debut appearance at Carnegie Library in DC it has been installed in multiple other venues in Washington DC, Maryland, and even Ontario, Canada.