This sculpture consists of a life-size rowboat made from plywood emerging out of a portal from a space-like scene. This piece continues my contemplation of death. It is both a dedication to my grandparents and a way for me to contemplate a near-death experience that I had at the age of 19. During this near-death experience, I flatlined for three seconds and hallucinated. In this hallucination, I felt a vast expanse that seemed much like I had slipped into space. It felt peaceful. This is what I hope death is like for my grandparents as they reach the end of their lives. My grandfather used to be the commodore of the San Francisco Yacht Club when I was young, and one of my first memories in life is helping him build a rowboat with my brother. That memory brought me into this life, making me feel capable and creative. Being on the ocean has always been the most peaceful place for my family, a place where we come together to be carried by the wind and the water. This rowboat installation is a way for me to contemplate where I think my grandparents will go after they’re gone from this plane of existence. It is a way for me to wish them safety and security on their journey to the other side.

This piece is a red steel chandelier-reminiscent sculpture that is weighted to the ground with a cinderblock. The chains on the chandelier form a spider-web shape that extends into individual strands beyond the metal frame. It is a dedication to my grandmother who died when I was sixteen. She had a stroke two years before she died and lost cognitive function in her brain. She was only able to communicate at about a kindergarten level for the last years of her life. It has been hard for me to process what it meant to see the strongest women I knew lose all basic control of her own life. My grandmother had a red room in her house where I would stay when I would visit, and I made this chandelier in memory of that space she would create for our family physically and emotionally. Her love was big and heavy and present, it was felt by everyone in the room. I named this piece Woman because my grandmother represented so much of what it meant to be a woman for me. Although most of her life was big and beautiful, she was chained in the end by her husband and the medical system. Despite having so much autonomy and freedom throughout her life, the institution of marriage placed her third husband in charge of her care in the end rather than her children. She spent her final years having choices made for her that she would have never made herself. I see my grandmother’s end-of-life story as a metaphor for what has been happening to women throughout history.

This piece consists of a thin steel cube frame walled with yarn woven into spider web shapes which enclose a broken ceramic vase held in space by woven yarn secured to the outside web pattern and frame. It is a very personal piece for me because it contains a very sentimental object from an important time in my life where I underwent a lot of growth and change. As I have processed a lot of my life the past few years, I have had a difficult time seeing my memories as all good or all bad. This piece is an exploration of how I am trying to find beauty in sharp and fractured moments. The spider webs are meant to symbolize the distortion that time has on memory. Despite some of the past feeling sharp, I have learned to see the lessons in harsh moments. Memory helps me thread together the ways that hard times helped me grow.

This piece is a continuation of my resin series in which I am exploring my relationships with different objects and the memories that I associate with them. It consists of my grandmother’s bracelet cast in a resin orb to preserve it and view it from a different perspective. I especially enjoy the way that the shape magnified the details in the bracelet and warped it to be sort of unrecognizable from certain angles. My intention with this project was to preserve this family heirloom in a permanent way. The bracelet had cracked in the middle and I was afraid to keep wearing it, so I wanted it to be protected to last as something to remember her by.

The sculpture consists of a heart that forms a fleshy mass around a small architectural structure with two rooms visible. Both rooms are very different and contrast one another. They represent the dichotomy of heaven and hell. The larger room being a living room reminiscent of heaven, given an airy feeling. The smaller room, meant to represent hell, is more abstract in its meaning. It is a closet filled with unfolded laundry in a dark space. This is symbolic of the work that needs to be done in one’s heart to welcome in love. Both rooms have small lights that resemble the lights in a dollhouse. They are placed within the human heart to symbolize the duality of the human condition when it comes to matters of the heart. The large shape is held up by a chain that runs through the top of it. When suspended in the air, it invites movement and variation in its presentation. Overall, this dreamlike scene is meant to represent complications of the heart. The cluttered closet is placed in the left atrium, which is where people primarily get buildup that leads to heart attacks. The other room is clear and clean, but at the cost of buildup in the left atrium.

Widowmaker is a black plywood cutout of a spider with a heart shape cut out of its abdomen. A shiny, red, gut-like piece can be seen through the cut-out heart shape. It is a dedication to my mother, who survived a widowmaker heart attack in 2019 when she was 52. This is a type of heart attack in which you have full blockage in your heart’s biggest artery. Only 12% of people who experience this type of heart attack survive. My mom survived and it restructured her whole life, and mine in a lot of ways. In so many strange ways it gave her purpose and opportunity to step into a new life. It gave me perspective on the ephemeral nature of life and allowed me to feel time as a precious thing. This event also made me reflect on the staggering heart disease statistics in the United States and how the healthcare system fails so many people. While it is a gift that my mom is alive, she had to deal with the stress of monstrous medical bills after her heart attack that her insurance just wouldn’t cover. She must deal with being a cardiac patient for the rest of her life, dependent upon a medical system that sees people like her as disposable. Watching my mother go through this began my thoughts about the apocalypse being a slow process of descent. There is nothing civilized about being neglected by the systems that are put in place to provide care.

This piece consists of a found object (gate) that I collected from Bombay Beach, California overlaid with text extracted from my Apocalypse poem. I have been fascinated by the community in Bombay Beach for a few years now, as they have been able to create a thriving community in post-apocalyptic conditions. Thousands of artists live in Bombay Beach for a season every year to build art and programming for an event called the Bombay Beach Biennial in this small town that was abandoned after a man-made disaster. The event works to create space for artists and bring awareness to the ongoing toxification of the Salton Sea. Going to this event opened my eyes to the effects of man-made disasters and how they can accumulate into something much larger. Imperial Valley currently has some of the highest cancer rates in California, largely due to poor air quality from contamination. This was the first place where I was able to witness and build visual language for what the apocalypse means to me.

This piece is a plywood cutout of an egg with a painting of a woman’s silhouette sitting peacefully within. The figure appears through a frosted haze that leaves the woodgrain visible in some areas. The symbol of the egg has been significant for me for the past few years for many reasons but mostly because it conveys how I have felt in my time here in San Diego. It has been a contemplative time where I have felt safe and contained enough to explore the difficult emotions that I have been trying to sort through. Although I feel that I have grown too large for the container I have been in, I have felt comfort in my time here. I have been inspired by the symbol of the egg since listening to Andy Weir’s poem “The Egg” many years ago. This poem was important to me because it helped me contemplate complicated questions about life and death.

These pieces, hung with black frames, are a series of photo-intaglio prints made with light exposure at different phases of development. I made the collages as part of a series contemplating the experience of being a woman in the world today.