Holding the Tension (2025-ongoing)

The quilted, sculptural works from Holding the Tension (2026 - ongoing) offer the opportunity for contemplation of the everyday via formal relationships between parts of the whole. The curvy shapes are bodies with limbs, embracing and strangling one another. They contort and relax in a metaphorical collision of color, pattern and texture.

I don’t believe in pure abstraction. I approach quilting as collage, as pastiche, as remix. Formal decisions grow directly out of materiality and the limitation of what I have at hand. I repurpose fabrics from my own home, donated from viewers, or found in Chicago alleys and at estate sales. How those materials with distinct origins live together in the final piece points to a truth about all complex systems—ecological, sociopolitical, cultural, biological, relational. The whole is a result of the aggregation of often-overlooked smaller parts that endlessly repel and attract one another.

The pieces have no fixed top or bottom and are hung differently every time they are displayed. Flexible, changing installation echoes the way the sculptures are created: turning this way and that way on the horizontal bed of the sewing machine.