I moved around a little bit. I was in North Carolina for a little bit of my childhood. I lived in Kentucky for a little bit of my childhood, but I really set roots in Alabama. It’s where pretty much all of my family is. Mostly the South is where I’ve been my whole life, except for grad school.

I don’t see myself spending my whole life in the South. I mean, I love the South. So much of my work is inspired by the landscape here, but I need humidity. I need green. Rolling hills.

A lot of people forget about the South and forget about the beauty of it. It’s a very complex, nuanced place, and people don’t give it the credit it’s due.

I’m very drawn to storytelling, and I’m very drawn to spiritual practices. I’m a pastor’s daughter, and I grew up in the South. I grew up being really rooted in knowing the answers, and so as an adult, I’m very interested in what it means to not know. This constant searching and seeking.

There’s absolutely a lot of researching. That’s one thing grad school taught me how to do and cherish. I love to read. I love to research. I have found, through researching, a way to create this connection to things that feel very intuitive.

I think there’s a balance that is not easily struck between intuition-making and research-making, and I’m really interested in finding that balance.

I feel like I’m very indulgent in the research, indulging in what I’m drawn to and why, and hunting that down. I let myself just drown in these things that I’m really interested in and let them overlap.

I do a lot of writing and I do a lot of compiling. I tend to meld that with dreams or even conversations or thoughts that I have on my own, and I’ll let them sort of chimera into something new.

I think that is how I can be steeped in history and feel like I’m a part of something larger, but also bring something slightly just myself into it.

This came out of grad school, where my biggest issue was framing, because I was making all this work on paper. I hated the idea of having to just buy a frame. I didn’t like the look of it. I just couldn’t resolve it. Again, the resourcefulness of: what do I have access to with my low income and my unwillingness to allow other people to help me?

I had the idea to put the work between glass and then just seal it with solder. As I was teaching myself how to do it, I was wrestling with it, trying to tame it. Then I found that it was really exciting to build up and allow it to be unruly.

I’ve really prided myself on being resourceful, and I think I’m good at discerning what’s sustainable. In my materials, that plays out with using found objects. I think I’m a good problem solver. I’m presented with something to handle, and then I find a creative way to handle it.

I liked this idea of a small piece that required you to lean in and feel intimate with it because of the scale and the detail, but then there’s this protective element to it. Especially a few years ago, the frames were just very sharp, very thorny. I’ve drawn blood so many times.

Even the pendants that I make, I do not file them. They are sharp. I like that they could get snagged on things. And also that they’re this protective thing.

It evolved, of course, as things do when you do them over and over again. I realized that I could have this more controlled process with it, because I was learning all of it through trial and error. I felt like I got to know the material, and so it allowed me to try new things with it.

It moved beyond feeling like this protective, spiky frame. The ornamentation of it—the ornamentation of a relic or a reliquary—I’m sort of presenting: this is important. This is flashy. This is like, pay attention to me. This is sacred because I’ve decided it’s sacred.

And now I’m like, how much can I build upon it? How big can I go? It is a little bit taxing. I do have to allow myself breaks. But if I could, I would just build them endlessly. It’s almost like it can become a little bit obsessive, because it’s just this over-and-over-again, rhythmic thing.

I really do work very fast. I work small scale most of the time. I do these oil paintings, but I have less control over whether I can make something that I’m happy with in a timely manner. Sometimes I’ll whip it out in a day, and I’m like, perfect. And then, you know, it doesn’t work that way.

It’s been painfully hot here, but I’m really trying to mentally transition seasons. I’ve been making work with the harvest season in mind. Palette-wise and imagery-wise, that’s where I’m going and what I’m thinking about.