Yours,

As I walk through my every day, for as far back as I can recall, little phrases would repeat inside my head. THE LEAVES ARE TURNED, IT’S GOING TO RAIN A SMILE COULD MAKE A DIFFERENCE DON’T INVITE YOURSELF Little lessons and facts passed on to me, most often words of my mother. HOW WOULD THAT MAKE YOU FEEL YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY COULD BE GOING THROUGH BAD PEOPLE CAN WEAR BRIGHT COLORS FORGIVE AND ASK FOR FORGIVENESS TURN THE LIGHTS OFF WHEN YOU LEAVE A ROOM Repeating softly, SHARE LOVE YOUR ENEMIES YOU’RE THE OLDER SISTER, HE LOOKS UP TO YOU THOSE WHO HAVE, SHOULD GIVE like a mantra printed in the air with edges that softly bleed and fade away. BE GENTLE WORDS ARE LIKE SALT SPILT FROM A SHAKER CAREFUL, WE ARE SPONGES ONLY FIGHT IN DEFENSE SHH, LISTEN TO THE FROGS AT NIGHT These endless lessons, words, have always made me conscious, over-aware. Most especially of others and how I would—I might—affect them. And so I always tried my best to smile, to give, to—as my mother would say—‘be love’. But there’s a space between my young self and my current self. Separated by a gap I can’t quite place in my timeline, can’t quite describe. Maybe one set line doesn’t quite exist, but it seems to have nestled itself somewhere between my hopes and my actuality, to have become part of me while I wasn’t looking so closely. I grew up in a small town, with a big church, with weekends filled with trips to see family an hour away. A mother raised by a family of police, and a father raised by teachers—something about how all these things mixed has made me often think on how we treat one another, has made empathy an ideal through which I filter most things. That desire for others and myself to know real empathy, sculpted my upbringing, still sculpts my concerns, and feeds my anxieties about myself and the communities of which I am apart. It seems maybe I—we—all repeat the same harmful habituations. Personally, familially, nationally, globally. When I turn to myself, to those dearest to me, I see the truth of that. Through my drawings, sculpture, and writing, I work to better engage with the relationships I am part of, to look into them and pay them gentle attention. Through this, my work is a push and pull of illustration. A process of creating sculptural memorials to the relationships that I have neglected, paired with mark-making, documenting, the internal monologue that accompanies my doing so. All along I continue to collect little phrases, poetic words, short notes, drawing from them imagery that informs my work, through a growing system of personal symbolism. I bare my own body, my personal history, my internal voice, in hopes others will connect through their own. Poetic writings and readings, give context, and extend on the interaction I ask of others in some of my sculpture. I utilize performative and interactive means to create new communications between people. To highlight our disengaged intimacy, which we seek to supplement, often through limbs not of our own, but of the prosthetic of tele-technology which we like to keep so safely in our back pockets. Maybe my work only furthers this, but I hope it serves as a reminder of what we lack, together, so we can work to amend, as I am trying to amend.https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/art498/1022/thumbnail.jp