Last year I spent six months feeling utterly lost: uninspired, uncreative, and unable to locate the love I once had for my own artistic practice. What had always been the crux of my process – creating paintings, drawings, poetry, and mixed media pieces in direct response to the way I move through the world – eluded me. And so, I filled the gaps with something unexpected: bread baking. It provided me with solace, and it kept my hands busy. But eventually, toward the end of those six long months, something more emerged. It came, as Hemingway said of bankruptcy, gradually then suddenly. I realized that the things I love and value about bread baking echo the things I love and value about art making: the dedication to a process, the intimacy of touch, and the act of nurturing. Baking bread, like art, is the continuation of an ancient practice. One that embodies a rich history of patience and offering. Both require a devotion to tenderness and hope. Perhaps most importantly, they require this as well: the willingness to surrender myself to all of the variants I am unable to control. 

After years of exploration and experimentation I find my work to be propelled with themes of vulnerability, intimacy, loss, and sexuality. Regardless of material, my work has strong drawing qualities with emphasis on line work. Within my practice I work hard to allow my sketches, ideas, and pieces to feel sentimental and sensual, while fighting any urge to make my work come across as overly precious. 

My thesis, Stretching and Folding: A Meditation on Bread and Cultivating Intimacy is a body of work that embodies those themes while referencing the monumental year of 2020. The need for connection, dealing with isolation, and finding unique ways to care and respond to one another, are all ideas that have inspired this body of work.

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