Sensory Space

Ocean Basket

merino wool, wire

Ocean basket is a 100% wool sculpted basket meant to represent the oceans that fuel life on this planet. We couldn't exist without water, water is life and all of life needs water. It is a precious and incredible resource. Within the ocean basket dwells a group of creatures sculpted from wool that also couldn't exist without water. Water is a necessary ingredient to felt wool. Water brought these creatures to life. Give them names, imagine stories for them. What do they do? What do they eat? Where do they live? I may have sculpted them but you can give them their story. 

Grow Your Garden 

merino wool, velcro

Grow your garden is an interactive living wall. It is made of 100% hand felted wool. There are mossy rocks, mushrooms, ferns, sunflowers, poppies and bellflowers.  Each object has a velcro backing to allow you to create, design and grow your own garden how you choose. The natural world is precious and we have the chance as humans to work with it, work within it and to protect and cultivate it. As you create your own garden, think of the outside world and what you like to do in it, what it gives you and how you feel in it. I think we could all spend more time in our garden, whatever shape that takes for us. The woods, the ocean, the park, the community garden. Nature can inspire and heal if we can only find the time to care for it and to simply be present in it.

Entangled

Mixed Fiber Yarns, Wool, Steel

What is the structure of connection? I think of it like the patterns of cells, the crisscrossing of veins, intersecting tree roots and spreading mycorrhizal fungi that connect them. Entangled is a tunnel of interconnected yarns, creating a web through the art of crochet. This crochet pattern is something I have created and used in my own art repeatedly over the years as a representation of these entangled structures that connect us all  The Entangled tunnel can be interacted with in many ways from simply feeling it to crawling through it, stretching it over yourself or peering through to the otherside. 

Overstuffed

recycled plastic, repurposed textiles

Overstuffed is a mixed media chair sculpted from all recycled and repurposed materials. It's built for sitting and experiencing the sensation of something bursting at the seams. 

We are so consumed with materials in our culture and in our time. We collect and accumulate so many objects and things that we have to purchase storage units simply to house it all. When I think of that and then drive by a landfill filled with so many disposable goods I fear we are trapped in a cycle of buying and purging only to buy more while filling our planet with trash. While you sit in this chair, think about stuff, how overstuffed with things do you feel you are? How much do you throw away in a day?

color Abacus

Recycled Bottles, Acrylic Paint, BEADS, Wood

The Color Abacus is an exploration of the items we dispose of in our everyday lives. We are surrounded by single use plastics of which only 9% have ever been recycled. It feels almost impossible to truly avoid all of them so in my own life and in my artistic practice, I try to find ways to reimagine our waste. What can we transform and what can we imagine when we start to see what we find disposable as material for creation and for re-use. The color abacus is a multi- sensory sculpture, meant to engage hearing, vision and touch. 

MossLand 

wool yarn

Moss Land is a latch hooked rug filled with wool yarn and felted wool mushrooms. Every piece of yarn that forms this mossy landscape was attached by hand to the rug backing. Over 200 hours were spent sculpting this patch of moss and the mushroom clusters to create the experience and the tactile sensation of laying in soft and spongy moss beds among the mushroom patches. It is one of my favorite experiences in nature and I hope you enjoy this fiber based version of the experience

Above and Below

Mixed Fiber Yarns, Wool, Latex Paint

Above and Below is a latch hooked piece of textile art. Latch hooking is a method for making rugs and other tapestry textiles. This method allows for lots of texture to be added to a single piece and to create a large organic form. In creating this piece, I thought of the mossy green top as a representation for our planet, the lush ecosystems that create our living world. The tangled, hard, red tendrils that swirl below the patch of green are the ever growing and ever present system of harvesting the natural world for our own wants and needs, growing larger every day. 

Internal/External connections

Felted Wool

Everything is connected, from the microbes in the soil, in the air and inside of us, to the electricity that pulses in every cell of every living thing.  Our existence is felted together through energy and matter, just as this piece was felted together using wool. Felting is a method of tangling wool fibers together to create dense and sculptable fabrics. This piece is a felted web of openings and connections, ready to be tried on as a wearable sculpture in as many different ways as you can imagine. Solo or with a friend, find connection in the felted web. 

A Disappearance of Bees

Wool, Cotton, Recycled Fibers, Gold Leaf, Wooden Bee Frames

This is a series of interactive weavings that was done on recycled frames from my mother’s honeybee hives. Watching my Mom become a beekeeper, I have seen her deal with the plight of the disappearing honey bees. Pests and diseases are always something to fight against in the hive and the one that intrigued and inspired me the most was the wax moth and their telltale white and wispy trails they leave behind on the comb as they take over the space. I wanted to imagine a hive frame overcome with the wax moths environment, cocoons and webs eating up the hive. Pull the frames out of the hive box, just as a beekeeper would, to feel and inspect these frames.