the Anderson Gallery, Richmond, VA
Root System Tapestry
2021
I dreamt of birch bark; in this dream I gathered the bark, carefully printed images onto its surface, then stitched it together, making a blanket to keep my friends warm. Root System Tapestry is heavily inspired by this vision, and is dedicated to the idea of “roots” in every meaning of the word: our genetic material, our influences, vessels for nourishment, and physical scaffolding. This project is a love letter to nature, my loved ones, memory, and the cyanotype process. The tapestry gives rise to many questions; where do we, as individuals, really come from? Who and what makes us the way we are? How does nature nurture? How do our environments influence our lives? Perhaps most intriguing to me is the often-arbitrary line between man-made and natural; where does one end and the other begin? Should that boundary even exist? All these lines of questioning begin to take form within my mind and become inextricably tangled, just as in the intertwined root system of a forest.