2021
Felt, embroidery floss, rope, wood dowel
47" x 69"
ARMED AND DANGEROUS portrays a collection of revolutionaries from around the world who took up arms against oppressive governments. They are from left to right, top to bottom: Joan of Arc, Toussaint Louverture, Emiliano Zapata, Thomas Sankara, Blanca Canales, Boudica, Lakshmi Sahgal, Marquis de Lafayette, and Ho Chi Minh.
2019
27" x 22"
Found fabric mounted on a decommissioned server tray from Heartland Cafe.
I've always believed that fabric, especially clothing, holds memory. This is a portrait of the box that my cat Wesley died in--very suddenly--from a blood clot that went from his heart to his brain. The fabric used to make this piece came directly from the old clothes that were in that box.
2019
About 7 feet tall x various widths up to 2.5 feet.
Made with felt, embroidery floss, and chicken wire on a support pole.
Felt and embroidery floss
68” x 48”
2018
This contemporary quilt features topographical maps of glaciers’ recession over time. The smallest spots are what was left of each glacier at last surveying. Some may have since disappeared.
This installation was a collaboration among members of Third Estate Art. It will hang at The Glenwood in Rogers Park through the end of August, 2018.
Artist Statement
“Landscape of the Half-Forgotten” is a site-specific installation that addresses the issues of climate change and mass extinction by presenting viewers with a fantastical landscape. This hanging landscape pulls inspiration from shared memories and cultural fantasies, and we hope to highlight all the beautiful things in the world we stand poised to lose.
Three individual artists participated in this project. John-Michael Korpal created creatures that resemble marine life from all recycled materials. Reminiscent of jellyfish, the fragile creatures will dissolve if submerged in water. To draw community participation in the project, Cortney Philip constructed plant structures based on responses to the prompt: “Tell me about your favorite tree when you were a kid.” And Megan Baldeshwiler made an elaborate root structure using an intuitive crochet method that incorporated lumps and twists until organic shapes emerged.
In his own words:
There was some kind of tree in my backyard when I was a kid I really liked because I could climb it. It had thick branches. Thick trunk. About half as tall as the house. I would climb it nice and high, sit there for about 10 minutes, get bored, come down, and hope that maybe the following weekend someone would be impressed with my tree climbing skills. To this day, I don't think anybody noticed or cared.
In her own words:
We didn’t do trees when I was a kid. It was all about grass and yards. I remember running and running through the tall grass by the ocean. My mom worked at a place called Crazy Lobster by the boardwalk. We would get sherbet and my dad would let us run around in what seemed like a giant field, and we would chant, '“Jungle, jungle, jungle.” I went back years later, and it was just a little patch.
A partial catalogue of the crap in my mom's house when she died.
4” x 6”
Found fabric and thread
While my sister went for the jewelry, I went straight for Mom’s craft closet. This fabric used here was left over from Mom’s many projects—cat beds, pillow cases, curtains for my sister’s house—and the remnants tell the story of her creative life. The fabric was cut into the shapes of the countless objects she left behind, stacked and arranged on the curtain in a manner representative of the claustrophobic atmosphere of her home.
Made special for a Valentine's Day show, this piece depicts an exaggerated view of my husband's teeth--including the extra one that grew between his top left incisors.
24" x 36"
Felt and embroidery floss.
Embroidery floss and felt.
Approximately 4.5 feet by 6 feet.
Each quilt panel represents a "preexisting condition" that would cause a person to become ineligible for health insurance, should one of the new health care bills pass. Conditions like pregnancy and schizophrenia are depicted on the cellular or organ level to show how universal illness is.
For scale, and because it's fun to stand next to my work and get my picture taken!
On the wall at the Greenleaf Art Center for "Fear No Art."
Conditions depicted (clockwise from upper-left): pregnancy, HIV, pneumocystis pneumonia, and stroke.
Conditions depicted (clockwise from upper-left): sleep apnea, hepatitis, coronary artery disease, and rheumatoid arthritis.
Conditions depicted (clockwise from upper-left): breast cancer, schizophrenia, hemophilia, and ulcerative colitis.
Conditions depicted (clockwise from upper-left): organ transplant, obesity, multiple sclerosis, and polycystic kidney disease.
felt, embroidery thread, wooden dowels, and rope
46" x 54"
This contemporary narrative quilt tells the story of caring for my mother while she was dying of lung and brain cancer.
Every quilt has a motif. This quilt alternates between scenes from train windows as I traveled back and forth between Chicago, Illinois and Trenton, Michigan. The constant back and forth and social isolation of being hundreds of miles from my "real" life served as an emotional backdrop to the experience.
My mom didn't recognize that her hands were a part of her body, and she tried to cut her fingers off with a steak knife.
My mom went through fixed action patterns where she would try to act out her old routines in new ways, often for hours at a time. Once, she used the coffee pot to water her cane and my sister's diaper stash much like she would have watered her plants. Here, she unscrewed all the lightbulbs in her kitchen and tried to fry them like eggs in a pan.
My mom had a 16-year-old cat with arthritis and hyperthyroidism. A few months before she died, Mom could no longer do Maizy's meds because she couldn't tell her cats apart. Or she would forget that she'd already done Maizy's meds and do them again...and again. I took Maizy with me back to Chicago to keep her safe, and Mom told everyone I stole her cat. Maizy died two weeks after Mom.
The first time I shaved my mom's head, she was terrified it would hurt. She didn't understand how hair worked anymore.
At the very end of my mom's life, when she was decomposing but still breathing, our days revolved around changing her diapers, changing her sheets, changing her clothes, and dealing with her smells. Our individual relationships with her were replaced by a communal relationship with her genitals. It was during this final phase in caring for her body that I discovered that my mom and I had identical moles.
In the days after my mom died, the hospital bed sat in her living room waiting to be picked up by the medical supply company. It had absorbed all her smells, as well as the smells her body made after she died and before the funeral home came to get her. The two cats who were still living with her when she died would sit on the bed and roll around in the stinking indent her body had left.
Note: Those two cats, Lucy and Lola, were re-homed with my sister. They are doing well.
acrylic, magazine letters, and team spirit on canvas
12" x 12"
12" x 12"
12" x 12"
12" x 12"
12" x 12"
