My artistic practice engages with the sentimentality of memory-keeping and collecting. My mother is an avid scrapbooker who has encouraged my innate urge to document and preserve records of my life. Using source materials from my personal and family collections, I create archives and explorations of these memories and their meaning. Through these archives, I seek to understand the way we collect and accumulate memories through our physical belongings and surroundings and how we can preserve them. 

In my work, I arrange, record, and repurpose collections of photos, ephemera, and mementos. With these materials, I create collages that aim to find systems within the chaotic and often nonsensical aspects of life. I also use print and photograms to capture their essence through shadow and texture. Following these explorations, I sort and store these collections, often in the form of non-traditional artists books that utilize structures such as rolodexes, catalogs, and drawers. When I am ready to let go of objects I have been holding onto, I often scan or photograph them before discarding them, or if possible, repurpose them into something that will give them a new life recycling them into handmade paper.

In my most recent project, I have cataloged samples from my old underwear that have been taken out of commission. I have taken these samples and scraps and encapsulated them in overbeaten abaca, a translucent handmade paper. I am exploring the textures and patterns of this material but also honoring these objects and how they’ve served me. I am interested in preserving and encapsulating them in a material where they can be viewed and held but not touched. I’ve found that there is a paradoxical nature of the encapsulation process which permanently protects yet also destroys these objects.

I catalog these objects and mementos so they can serve as personal memory archives, but I also hope they function for viewers by invoking nostalgia for shared experiences and as a reminder of the benefits of our connection to our material histories. I ask the viewer to consider what things they are holding onto and why they treasure these objects.