Write an artist statement introducing a body of work about memory, heritage and objects of meaning

I make work that gathers fragments of home—scented kitchens, hand-stitched textiles, the soft clack of a television in another room—and reassembles them into small reliquaries of memory. My practice moves between collage, painted surfaces and found objects; each piece is a quiet attempt to hold onto the textures and gestures that shaped me. I am drawn to the ordinary things that carry disproportionate weight: a worn tablecloth, a childhood toothbrush, the language elders used when they thought no one else was listening. These items function for me as mnemonic anchors, and in the studio I give them space to speak again.

My family came from [your ethnicity/heritage], and that lineage is never far from the work. Rituals of food, clothing and domestic repair taught me to see value in repair, repetition and care. I use fabric, thread, and layered paint to echo those acts of mending—sometimes literal stitching, sometimes an underpainting scraped back to reveal earlier marks. The surfaces are intentionally weathered: stains, frayed edges and tape marks are evidence, not flaws. They are the record of use and time, and they insist that memory is messy and tactile, not pristine.

Emotion in these pieces is often tempered rather than declared. Nostalgia is present but complicated; it can be a warmth that softens the past or a lens that obscures its harder edges. I want my work to hold both at once. Colors that remind me of my childhood—muted ochres, diluted indigos, and the bright punctum of a plastic toy—sit beside monochrome fields that quiet the eye. Scale is modest because intimacy matters: I want viewers to come close, to feel the whisper of brushwork and the give of fabric. Proximity creates empathy; it re-enacts the act of remembering as an embodied experience.

Objects recur as motifs: a chipped dish becomes an entire painted field; a torn recipe card is translated into pattern. I collect and decontextualize, allowing the ordinary to become emblematic. Language also appears—snatches of handwriting, folded receipts, grocery lists—because verbal traces hold family rhythms and the small, repeated chores that structure days. These marks are often partially obscured; memory itself rarely offers a full account.

Ultimately my work is an invitation to reflect on the ways we carry our pasts. It asks: which things do we keep? Which gestures do we repeat without naming? And how do lineage and daily life intertwine to shape who we are? I don’t aim to provide answers. Instead I offer surfaces and objects that encourage slow looking, soft recall, and the recognition that belonging is built out of countless small, imperfect acts.