In my work, I like to think about natural processes that happen over time, like evolution, decay, and biotic/abiotic relationships. I’m interested in rooting those processes in a specific place, so I’m exploring Mapping Change as a theme.

Toe River Hellbender (2019), used linen, cotton thread, grapevine tendril, typewriter on silk organza, collaged image from old book.

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Atchafalaya: That Naughty Waltz (2023), old linen tablecloth, ink, gesso, player piano roll.

“Place” is not a fixed thing. I’m inspired by Harold Fisk’s maps of the historical traces of the Mississippi River (like the one below), produced as part of a report to the US Army Corps of Engineers in the 1940s. Rivers change all the time. Coastlines do too, and in our rapidly changing climate, they change now more than ever.

Harold Fisk, Army Corps of Engineers, map of historic courses of the Mississippi River (1944).

Every place is an event — a . . . v e r y . . . s l o w . . . e v e n t.

Here are some works in progress exploring some incipient ideas with maps. They are in their early stages and they are going to get some other elements layered in, but I don’t know what yet. The work tells me what it needs next…

Stitching a river by hand helps me feel as if I am marking the time it takes to traverse the river or coastline. I like to work with used linens as a substrate because they bring in human history to blend with the natural history.

The map above is of the Mississippi headwaters. I have stepped over that awesome river at its humble source, where it’s nothing more than a shallow creek.