There are many ways to write a book. I had to trust the pre-production process of this residency to let the raw grief emotions out on the blank canvas. This arrangement represents a cover spread of a book. I found myself referring to the saying ‘don’t judge a book by its cover,’ to show that while on the cover spread, you see a mess of material and imagery. As you open the book, and enter the exhibit, you will see a lot more to the story.

I started this residency with the two larger canvases. As with most of the pieces in this collection, these were edited throughout the residency. They represent growth that can come from grief and that I could make sense of all I had been through.

The smaller book is a mock-up of the IWB process I was working on alongside the collection. I researched topics, reflected, did observational drawings, and explored topics about the main theme of grief. The pages spill out to show what was spilling out of this residency process.

*Caroline and Evan Shortes added the triangle hues on the top of the large canvas before departing on the Appalachian Trail in 2022.

The large canvas was started in 2020 and repurposed in this artistic residency. It represents reinventing my perception of grief. It started as a self-portrait and it went through alot of reformatting. It helped me lean to stop giving in to the dsire to erase the bad parts. it is part of acceptance and not letting the past define the future.

The canvas on the left of ‘Backbone’ represents an old version of myself that I thought was going to become absorbed by despair. Exploring memories and connections with loved ones helped me to find rebirth out of the decay. This piece helped me to see that I learned so much from letting out emotions through art that was bottled up.

The canvas on the right of ‘Backbone’ reflects the hollow feelings I had before I hit rock bottom. It shows aspects of letting go of my future, and my perceptions of procreation, fertility, and body image. It took a long time to reframe my perspective around my vessel. Understanding that change is a part of life gave me solace.

The Skateboard explores redefining the spiritual space around grief. It is a conversation about the illusion of separation of feminine and masculine energies and releasing preconceived notions on what it means to be human in an assigned vessel.

The carved body being squished by a candle in a wheel represents the discomfort I have felt being in my vessel. This piece shows how I learned to recenter myself, learned to accept where I was, where I am, and where I am going. The 5 panels represent my family unit all reflecting on this process. It is about looking at the perspectives inwardly and trying to unlock the energy I was trying to suppress.

This collection of five is an abstract way of talking about my family unit. It is a collection of five moving from chaos to understanding the bond of our souls. It is meant to look different at separate angles with the reflective materials. Each piece has the same composition but varies, much like members of a family unit perspectives.

This piece is about learning to let go of perfection. I was trying to pigeonhole myself into a category. I put less time into it and felt finished with it a lot faster than with my other pieces. The process included an acceptance of letting go of the grief. I destroyed the canvas during a moment of pain. I tried to stitch up the canvas but realized it was then losing what made it interesting. I had to learn to let things be. Perfection can be a process of overworking something and losing what makes us interesting and unique.

The oval piece was started in 2020 at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and the start of the journey of healing. It is a study of the Fall of Icarus which is a tale of caution. It helped me learn to grow from my mistakes. The mushrooms reflect decay and rebirth. Mushrooms became an important symbol to me as I was learning to see my falls not as failures to reach perfection but as part of my acceptance of myself.

The rectangular piece is simple. It is about just letting it go. It is a study of beginning and stopping.

This piece originally started in 2021. It is meant to remind me to never again forget to take care of myself. It started as one project and was repurposed into a painting of a Blue-Ringed Octopus. Exploring the anger side of grief, I carved out a portion of the work. This canvas gave me reason to pause and it was the start of realizing that I was still holding on to too much. Experiencing each moment of grief slowly lead to acceptance at the close of the residency.

The two non-sequitur circles represent my attempt to understand the blurriness between the feminine and masculine parts of myself.

The guitar represents expanding my creativity and reconnecting with my love of music. I have always loved music and playing instruments with other musicians. I fell out of practice from tainted experiences. This piece bridges a love of music away from the past and into new beginnings of understanding evolving energies.

This piece represents the passage of time. The bottom canvas is my justice painting that I made in high school and the top painting is the last painting I produced before I started this journey of healing. It is approximately the time I spent holding my pain in my mind and body as a way of trying to protect myself. This method was not sustainable and it eventually broke. This piece shows that holding in feelings is not great and the release of these emotions feels very aggressive to me. It shows how the body gets dysregulated from bottling emotions. I believe this to be the denial part of grief. It shows that the work continues. It is not a linear process to heal from grief. I have created an entire collection and I still haven’t figured it all out.

This piece is an image I had as I meditated and did yoga throughout the residency. I learned about using chakras to feel where I was holding the energy and then learn to breathe it out. It is about reconnecting with my body. I found a needed security of being at ‘home’ both in a place and in my body.

I have experienced conflict in how I view my body. This triptych shows how I view the feminine, masculine, and non-binary energies of myself. I often feel being feminine is uncomfortable while at the same time strength. The masculine view is a blue hue. It has a fight, flight, freeze aspect to it that is reflective of that part of me being pushed down. In the center is my non-binary experience in a blend of both feminine and masculine energies.

As I designed this residency I asked myself why make art and what am I working towards? I wanted to make comics since I was very young.

The painting collection became a process of creating panel concept art. The interactive table was an opportunity for the exhibit attendees to place smaller panels over the background to create a variety of scenes. I wanted to create a way to let others experience my process in a sensory way. The 4 smaller, non-sequitur block panels could be placed over the larger panels. This is a way to see how the pieces interact together; to see the transition between the colors and materials.

These pieces came about as my healing progressed. I learned about good love and I had room to start exploring materials. These pieces look messy because it was very messy trying to get to this point. Just like there is no one good way to love there is no one good way to experience art.

The spiral square has a lot of texture. It is a conversation about introspection and suppressed memories. It is about going in and out of thoughts without eliciting a strong reaction.

I created all these paintings to eventually create a comic book. This exhibit section is interactive. The large board is a sample comic book page and the various panels are to be rearranged on the page by the attendees.