About the Piece

How has this time changed or affected your art practice?

Since December 2019, I had been living with Cynthia, in what I would describe as an artist- in residence in her apartment. The focus was on our collaborative healing. Cynthia started her gallery called Stairwell Los Angeles at the Francis (the family quadraplex in Pico Union). I began using the domestic space as a studio, I had a nice bed, and good food. We started organizing my finances, and conversed about our mental health, and what we wanted for ourselves. Artistic ideas were very much also a part of this, but the focus was on my learning. A learning process about how to live more financially and mentally independently, and how to do this within a system that is designed to keep you in need. It was a workshopping on how to navigate capitalism and stay in ones own humanity and gratitude.

These past two years, I have made work in different parts of the world. It has been a re-learning of my own patterns of living. I’ve learned to follow and trust a guttural feeling of knowing. Walking and thinking with my body in motion have worked as a way to open up that space for ideas to enter. Time without an intention, other that to just walk, and allow for it to be- is the most important material. I make the work, then I leave it-my practice stays with me.

Coming home to Los Angeles was a major confrontation- this was before Covid-19.

The way that I have been working over the past two years has made it possible for me to shift, change and adapt ideas with more trust in myself.

I feel a need to make art now, I actually can’t stop because I feel an immediacy in the experience of a shared sickness. I don’t need to suffer, and I don’t need to ignore my basic needs, to thrive artistically for myself. That is what Covid-19, and having this time to reflect, has taught me about maintaining and living within my art practice.