Memory Box, 2024

Handmade hemp paper, beeswax, found and foraged materials

As years pass and recollections blur, memories cement like false fossils. Memory Box is a confrontation of these falsehoods. I piece together composite skeletons that anthropomorphize my own history. Preservation is rotten work- I prod and pry them into glass jars, submerge them in fluid, and pin them to felt. They press against their enclosures in their state of entrapment. These specimens endured evolution.

Printmaking and paper-making techniques mold archived materials into organic, visceral beings. They carry remnants of their past versions as I carry my own- Where their waxed-paper skin harbors slivers of fiber I carry a decade old splinter in my palm. Yet, the memories on display crave a new form. They pull outsiders in, eager to be admired on their dusty shelves and evolve again through a new perspective.

Existing in limbo between institution and mad scientist laboratory, my practice of creature curation turns the viewer into an investigator of their own collections.