Emotional Landscapes,

Ink on paper, clay, sound compositions

A Fractured Sigh, BravinLee Gallery, December 2-December 16, 2020

Kenyon College Senior Student Exhibition, Gund Gallery,April-May 2019

Every day for the past year, I’ve intuitively drawn, with my eyes closed, the emotional movement I feel in my body from head to toe. I have collections of these drawings strewn around my apartment and studio, they’ve become remnants of feelings that have come and gone, proof of their existence in my life and in my body. Having made an archive of these drawings I’ve found that the ways in which their forms grow and shrink, darken and lighten, and curve and hollow, create patterns that help me understand my emotions, and where in my body I hold them. The meditative process of making these maps each day has become a ritual for me, and these drawings have become a language.

For this piece, I chose seven meditative drawings made over the course of the semester, and expanded their original forms with a stippling technique. The sounds that play from the ceramic nests hung in front of the drawings were recorded over the past four months and then re-composed to respond to the mood of the drawings. The sound nests and the drawings are meant as a call and response. The sounds of my life, of friends laughing and the river moving, have deeply and beautifully influenced the ways I’ve felt and the shapes that the drawings take. While I began this project from an introspective place, I’ve come to realize that it is more about connection than anything else. Understanding how I carry emotion in my body means understanding how it originates, how we affect each other, and how we relate. Pairing sound with my drawings is my attempt at reaching outwards, of inviting the viewer into my own emotional landscape and asking them to think about their own.