the force that through the green fuse drives the flower, 2019

This was my final project in school. I always felt like I wasn't doing enough in my last year there, like everyone else was reading and doing more and I was always behind. But making this work gave me a comfort in my slowness and reminded me that it can be a wonderful thing to take your time. I think there is an importance to making without thinking too much about it, but that has come more for me now outside of school than it did while I was there. It was easy to get too hung up on why I was making what I was, what it meant. There was always a need to explain myself. And while it's great and important to have reason to doing something, I think it's also great and important to just do things for fun and because it feels good to do it.

This was a project that just felt really right to do. It's made up of random scraps of fabric both bought and found, dyed with black tea, onion skins, turmeric, blueberries, and rose petals. I sewed them all together by hand in whatever ways felt right while I was holding them, with the intention of making a circle of fabric to be hung from the ceiling. I wrote a lot about the process while I was doing it, and I've beaded some of those written words onto the fabrics. It was displayed hung from the ceiling of the gallery, and I encouraged people to walk around and within it and touch it. I enjoy making art that other people can hold or touch or use.

The name is stolen from Dylan Thomas' poem. In my understanding of his poem, he spoke of the same energy and time that drives everything on this planet and the cycles of birth and death. This all felt connected to the motions of natural dyeing I was playing with. And beyond that, it hit on this big overarching feeling that had enveloped me throughout the last year of school; my working relationship to materials/nature and our time together. Where we all came from, how we communicate while together, where we are all going afterwards.

These photos were taken by Aidan Devereaux.