Talismans, folk art, and objects of creative and spiritual inspiration have helped me feel emotionally and artistically connected throughout my life. As a self-taught fiber artist, I gravitate toward the mythical, the archetypal, the strange. I embrace imagery and language that conveys a dark and compelling beauty, that explores the harrowing experience of embodiment, and that provokes empathy, connection, and transformative emotion. Hence my fascination with Frida Kahlo. She reminds us of core truths: that damage metamorphosizes, that wounds can become talismans, and that struggle can lead to the most powerful forms of expression. My work endeavors to honor a wide range of cultural influences—Mexican, Haitian, Native American, Middle Eastern, and more. I draw inspiration from the long legacy of women who told stories with needle and thread (including my own great-grandmother, whose crewel work hangs on my walls).

One of Frida's unique strengths was her ability to allow the tendrils of her pain to burgeon into works of terrible beauty--the stems and roots of which bind us to her today. My highly elaborate embroidered hoops recreate and reinterpret Frida's paintings and drawings. I envision the threads of these artworks as continuations of those shoots, connecting me (and you) viscerally to her work. Needlework has long been considered “women’s work” and associated with what is quaint and safe and decorative and gendered—and I feel like those are associations and boundaries that Frida loved to play with and destroy in her paintings—so honoring her work through fiber art feels particularly fitting to me. Frida inspires an intense craving for spiritual communion and by entering the world of her artwork, many of us feel less alone and more bound to the world, to others, to ourselves.