Teetering the line between beauty and discomfort, my work invites others to contemplate where that boundary lies within themselves. Dealing with topics such as femininity and the body, I find myself torn between making work that truly represents my personal experience, and making work that is more easily received by those with different lived experiences than my own. I struggle to balance my desire to be understood with my desire to be heard at all.

I am relating the body to the materials and processes that my craft stands upon, immortalizing hair through formed copper wire and mucus through wax modeled silver. Using pattern, repetition, and visual texture, I am drawing attention to the beauty of the unintentional manifestations of self that appear in shapes we create with shed hair in the shower to the directional patterns in which we scratch an itch. Those unconscious actions tell our stories.

The fabrication processes I use are traditional jeweler’s techniques such as vitreous enamel, chasing and repousse, and lost wax casting. Although my applications and intended outcomes extend beyond traditional frameworks, I remain attentive to the historical and cultural origins of these techniques. Throughout the hours of dedication to the making process, I acknowledge the privilege of learning and using these once gatekept forms of craft for my own contemporary act of self-expression.