April 2026

This page documents a white oak basket which connects me to my maternal ancestors in Middle Tennessee. My great-great-great-great-great Aunt Shug made these baskets, and my family still has one of them. There is a tradition of white oak basketry in Middle Tennessee, and I was able to learn how to make one from Sue Williams, who is the last person still teaching this. It is said that the time it takes to go from tree to basket is 70 hours for a master basket maker.

My Aunt Shug spun her own yarn, wove, made baskets, and more. This work is a big part of an ongoing, life-long effort to be in touch with my ancestors who lived closely to the land. Processing the white oak and weaving this basket was a meditation and integration of this connection, story, and lineage.

I intend to continue this tradition and keep making these baskets, as well as explore what other forms this material could take.

2023-2025

Handwoven fabric, embroidery

My co-worker and friend Claire Drennan dreamed up this idea which became a beloved community project. Several of us foraged vines and created these letters while the vines were green. Full description of project: https://penland.org/c-r-a-f-t-baskets-of-summer-2024/

Spring 2020

Part ritual, escape, collaborative sculpture, part meditation, visual poem, installation, part place-based natural dyeing experiment… I did this during covid lockdown, when everything had fallen apart, and what I had to fall to and love were the earth and fabric. The fabric was removed with dyed areas later, and put into my stash to be recovered at a later date.

Each garment is a portrait of a family member and a meditation on labor and relationships. This series was a labor of love and exploration of identity, the act of gifting, and personal myth and story telling. All color in each piece came from me dyeing it by hand using natural dyes. The lace in Lace Spirit is handmade by me, and I foraged the black walnuts used to dye that piece a rich brown. Working mostly from my bedroom, I sewed the overalls’ applique by hand. I dyed and hand-wove the fabric in Southern Belle , which is a piece about domestic labor, the alienation of conservative Christian womanhood, and is intentionally lacking in creative design. The fur used in Rabbit and Raven was skinned by the subject of the piece from a coyote hit by a car. That piece includes themes of strength and vulnerability. Screen printed images on Joy, Hope, Nostalgia were done using natural dyes, and many were based off of family photographs. Using natural dyes in this work was me engaging with my deep connections to the natural world. Each of these slow and intentional processes provided time and space to meditate on these relationships and stories amidst incredible political and social turmoil which impacted me personally during the years of 2016 and 2017.

In order:

Appalachian Queer for Justice

Linen, natural dyes

Joy, Hope, Nostalgia

Rayon, natural dyes, tencel yarn

Rabbit and Raven

Silk, cotton, natural dyes, textile pigment, coyote fur, snake bones

Southern Belle

Hand-woven tencel, silk, natural dyes

Lace Spirit

Silk, cotton lace made by the artist, natural dyes, vintage cotton sheet, family locket

2017

2020

linen, cotton

hand sewn embroidery and reverse applique

Portraits of plants

2020

Natural dyes and embroidery floss

2019

handwoven cotton, wool, silk, steel, natural dyes

2018

This print is a study of the relationship between sleep and dread. Linoleum block printed on cotton using a natural dye iron/tannin ink process.

A place-based ritual garment

silk, cotton, foraged and purchased plant dyes

Words taken from my journals, handwritten in dye on scraps of fabric, like scraps of paper.

cotton, silk, rayon, fiber reactive dyes

2015

wool, organza silk, acid dyes, wooden button made by the artist

2016