I become increasingly conscious of the self as an active protagonist. Amidst a rapidly changing ecosystem, I search for my own footprint—vulnerable, failing, changing, retracing. I record day-to-day observations, interactions, hopes for restoration, and fears of what will be lost indefinitely. Recurring characters intermingle in my story: shadowy figures that slide between frames, insects and amorphous creatures, seeds that look like eggs, oak trees, doorways, windows, seashells and snail shells, the eddying of water, the personality of weather, an endless labyrinth. Nature's inherent structure continues to reveal itself, spilling into our spaces, reminding us that we are only guests here. Life and death blend together in a continuous cycle. I want to be present; I don’t want to be an ant. In slowing down I notice points of connection: how one relates to a place, how a living thing relates to a non-living thing, how a living thing relates to another living thing, and how our memories and experiences thread these relations together.

Through an expansive practice involving artists’ books, drawing, printmaking, creative writing, and installation art, I investigate how we exist in relationship to our environments (interior and exterior) and how we move between them, physically and psychologically. My work unfolds against a uniquely Floridian backdrop: my upbringing in Darby (a hamlet in Florida—smaller than a town) in a one-bedroom cabin that my dad built, and the yearly hurricanes that battered our home. On nights when the power would go out from the rigor of the storm, my family would wake up to water rising through the floorboards, softening them. At other times, we would welcome the storm with a boisterous embrace, trudging through the three feet of water that surrounded our cabin like a strange daydream. Post-storm, my sister and I would look for things that had been lost: one lone shoe, a chair that had floated away, a blue hair clip shaped like a turtle. It was a search and rescue effort in which every discovery felt valuable. I have carried this notion into my current practice—transformation after change or disaster begins in the imagination, in the cleanup after a storm. Hope creates a pathway to walk forward on. When things collapse, the capacity to start over is present in the pieces strewn across the ground. The first step is to pick them up.

Through this lens, I ask viewers to question where the division is, or if there is even one at all. I myself have many questions: what is the narrative we will leave behind? How can we navigate our environments with renewed awareness and sensitivity? What does it mean to live? Or more importantly, what does it mean to live well?