SECOND LIFE​

​Each piece in this series begins with an unfinished antique textile hobby project made by an anonymous person. Every artifact is different in technical aptitude and style. All were abandoned at various stages of completion and each begging for collaboration. I photograph each object as I find it, research its place in history, and the original author’s technique. With the use of digital and handmade textile techniques, hot glass work and other materials, I bring them to a new stage of completion. The series examines the cultural status of domestic handwork and the historical devaluation of labor traditionally associated with women. By bringing these hobby projects into dialogue with contemporary art practices, the work asks whose creativity is preserved, celebrated, and remembered. It challenges distinctions between art and craft, amateur and professional, innovation and repetition, and questions the hierarchies that separate fine art from forms of making rooted in utility, leisure, and care. By extending these abandoned works into new material and conceptual territories, I create encounters between generations, technologies, and modes of making. The pieces become sites where memory, labor, and imagination accumulate, revealing how objects can carry relationships across time and how acts of care can transform what has been discarded into something newly visible.

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