“If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it's useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then next day you probably do much the same again--if to do that is human, if that's what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time.”

- Ursula K. Le Guin “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”

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My practice tracks relationships between feminine labor, earth, and familial traditions

through the lens of vassalage. I make sculptures, performances, and installations using my body, plant fibers, soil, and clay to explore life cycles that connect women throughout history. These pieces detail ecological soil infertilities, and reproductive justice issues and their effect on human tradition within a male-centric consumer society.

 

Most recently my research focuses on connections between women and soil fertility loss due to climate change. Within this investigation, I focus on gendered labor practices used in ancient crafts, collection, hand weaving, and movement to highlight the link between gender and consumer earth traumas evident in the depletion of natural resources. I materialize laborious making practices to place the body in (landscape) space as oversized open-weave basketry structures to tie generational tradition with historical land trauma. By using plastic waste, I demonstrate humans’ marriage to consumerism as we discard maternal bonds our ancestors cultivated with nature.