Statement

Grounded in my lived experience as a disabled artist, I work from bodily difference as a generative force rather than a limitation. My practice centers sculptural textiles and hybrid forms that engage the body as both subject and sensor. Through a lens of crip wisdom, I understand slowness, interdependence, and sensory difference as sources of knowledge, resistance, and repair.

I work with salvaged leather, hand-dyed silks, and mechanical fragments, all materials marked by prior lives and chosen for their ability to hold tension, texture, and memory. These works, sewn, bound, and layered, function as tactile devices: part garment, part interface, part terrain. They invite sensory engagement through scent, touch, and interaction, making palpable what is often invisible.

Concocting work that interacts with the body, I corral many media. Physically bending to the materials’ imprints while impacting them with my intent, I become their expressive vehicle. Sewing machines extend my body and allow me, through a complicated dance of foot pedals, to pierce and sew. This process of merging separate media results in a site of energy transference >the joinery< the activated point that thrusts one medium into another.

Many of these sensorial machines are meant to be worn or handled; others breathe scent, evoke shelter, or extend prosthetic forms shaped by my experience as an amputee and wheelchair user. Each piece holds tension between exposure and refuge, utility and embodiment. I consider these forms offerings of service: protective coverings, interactive tools, and kinetic architectures that respond to the viewer.