ORIGiNAL: Handmade and Human is a book about inherent value, past, present, and future, of making things with your hands. This work features interviews from Opelika makers: David Bizilia, Henry Williford, and Barbara Birdsong, as well as personal thoughts and musings.
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This project was a part of a directed study with Professor Bryant. Printed on Vellum, hand bound, and French folded for a premium experience. Original photography, mark making, and hand drawn type. Photography in chapter 3 by Henry Williford, Ceramics by David Bizilia and Claire Barber, and Jewelry by Barbara Birdsong.
My book on love and freedom is hanging in the Ad Hoc show @saic_galleries 👋
Go give it a hug if you need one!
(I WANT TO SEE YOU FREE. DO YOU WANT TO SEE ME FREE? 2025)
House Church
Church is a place where people feel God. I’ve been thinking a lot about church architecture this season and NEEDED to make it for myself. I hope you enjoy.
A big THANK YOU you to everyone who came to the last printmedia grad talk of the semester! I’m so proud of my amazing peers @steshyyy and @victoriatrakas and I hope that some of what I said made sense 🪨🤓 Keep building your INNER ROOMS! It just gets better and better.
Next Monday April 20th at 4pm I’ll be giving an artist talk along with the talented @victoriatrakas and @stesh.y about INNER WORLDS, my practice, and design instincts. Come on out and learn something!
Sitting with Discomfort—I find it strange that all the evidence for existence is in our body’s ability to experience the world.
Are our senses trustworthy? Are the things that bring us comfort actually good for us, or are they merely behavioral patterns passed down from generation to generation? “Here is how the world works and how to live within it. Good luck, kid.” How am I supposed to know anything? Feeling out of body is a reality for humans through self-awareness. We live our lives in our heads. When I walk down the street, my mind is myself, and I am driving my body. “Take a right here.” I am told to be embodied, but what is that? People tend to give advice that has no practical application. It’s poetry. Why do we need poetry to
make sense of a literal world? I think it’s because at the core of experience, nothing makes any sense at all, and we all know it. Poetry makes us feel like things can be figured out. Abstraction identifies the complicated.
Do you sit with your discomfort?
Wooden pew with embedded stones from my rock collection.
How do I know satisfaction. How do you know satisfaction? How do you know it’s face when it knocks at your door? You can only recognize someone you know… so have you met satisfaction? Is she beautiful? Was she kind? Did you cry? How did you know it was truly satisfaction, rather than excitement or hope or joy? Does the difference matter? Honestly, I try not to think about it in the name of embodiment. It works most of the time. I don’t know satisfaction, but I know God, I think? So maybe I’ll ask him.
Wood panel, acrylic paint, steel, childhood silverware, velvet, paper, ink, ribbon, and stone reliquary
Drinking a cup of coffee, you have tea. We are seated in a comfortable wooden booth. Lace under my cup. I kept it. I’m thinking. Indulging in the world of my mind. Kissing absurdities and manhandling mystery. It’s weird and uncanny trying to know the unknowable. I know that you know this. We sit in the silence and understand that nothing makes any sense at all. I’ll take my coffee with some cream, though, thank you kindly, ma’am.
Acrylic and sand painting on canvas, 48” x 60”
