art
I began making art to deal with pain after a succession of traumatic brain injuries in 2017. I used materials that were in my immediate surroundings. My first pieces were far less about art and far more about trying to understand my situation, manage my pain and rebuild skills. I think it might now be my primary language.
I didn’t realize that making art would be such a doorway to my ancestors and my ingrained, insatiable quest to better understand myself and everything else. It’s a compulsion and I’ve become bizarrely prolific. I haven’t stopped. I love it. And it loves me just right.
I make all kinds of art. It’s all multimedia, the basis of which is typically salvaged materials and things that I find or dumpster or am given. I love using mirrors in my work because they make me “snap to” and helps to move me along and ground me. Mirrors feel like portals – perhaps to possibility, and always to dimensional and ancestral realms.
Along with salvaged materials, CT scans and doctors’ instructions have become a staple in my work. These explorations have evolved into hybrid and otherworld beings that attempt to capture the places between experience and understanding where I exist and create.
Artworks & Project Index
Past Art Projects & Series
Gallery Shows
New Work
Fine Accessories for
Smoking and Ritual
I make each piece by hand and infuse them with prayers and intentions for love, justice, health, and the best possible outcomes.
Items are made to use in rituals involving smoking and to be hung and used on your altar and in everyday rituals and prayers.
The materials are always my muse. I'm endlessly inspired by nature. Some accessories are larger and more elaborate coffee table pieces. I test each one for comfort, ease, and function.
I make each piece by hand and infuse them with prayers and intentions for love, justice, health, and the best possible outcomes.
I ADORE making pieces for individuals and groups.
Please get in touch with me to discuss your vision for a commissioned piece!
Materials are nearly all found and recycled and typically include:
West coast gathered abalone, found and salvaged wood, stainless steel and sterling vintage bits, including jewelry and chandelier hardware, stuff from my backyard and garden, resin and epoxy, and a lotta magic.
Transition Guides
Recently I’ve been creating memorial pieces and little sculptural transitional guides for family and friends who have lost loved ones, moving through hard times and going through major transitions.
If you or someone you know is moving through grief or transition and you feel that they’d benefit from a specially crafted piece to help see them through this time, please click the button below.
Functional Work
As a Capricorn I find great meaning and value in being able to enjoy and use what I create. I like making art that melds with and grows creativity and connection in our everyday lives.
I make useable and wearable art such as jewelry, lighter holders, tote bags, lamps, vases, reimagined and recycled cigar boxes, trays and table tops.
jewelry
tote bags
lamps
lighters
Commission
I love making commissioned pieces. I love connecting with the person who receives the piece and individualizing it. I put intention and love and abundance and safety into everything that I make, and it’s exciting to make something for someone else where I get input and connection with the recipient.
The Shape of What Spilled
An experimental creative nonfiction manuscript-in-progress made of text and images created while in the early stages of healing from an uncomplicated traumatic brain injury. Hand crafted in Santa Fe, New Mexico from found and salvaged materials.
Submitted to Crush/Repeat’s 2018 show which took place at Love City Love Gallery in Seattle, Washington.
Haruspecies
Haruspex, in antiquity, were clerics who could read omens in the entrails of animals. These pieces represent the daily ritual of interpretation of the world through objects-- miscellaneous pieces woven together to tell a story.
Through this project I sought a connection to the earth and to ancestors through playful incorporation of found, salvaged, and reimagined objects. These pieces tell a story of a being, embedded in the messiness of daily life, seeking a pattern, a connection, and aspiration to what came before.
Submitted to Crush/Repeat 2021
Haruspecies Series
Crush/Repeat
I have had the pleasure of participating in Crush/Repeat every year since 2018. Crush/Repeat is “an annual art show for queer community and friends where participants pick a small art project to repeat in some manner every day for the month of March” that takes place in Seattle, Washington and shows in April.
SFCC’s Hidden Talents Art Show
Santa Fe Community College, 2020
“Don’t Ask Your New Self to Be Your Old Self” is a cumulative mixed-media study of limits, proximities, and capacity. It tells stories I don’t remember and shows the stitching together of my understanding. I began creating images eight months after experiencing one and then a second traumatic brain injury with brief losses of consciousness, within a few days of one another.
The Transfused
The Transfused was a rock opera co-created by Nomy Lamm, Rachel Carns, Radio Sloan, Emily Stern and Freddie Fagula. Nikki McClure, and Tae Won Yu were integral players in the creation of set design and design directors.
The show featured Nomy Lamm and Emily Stern with Molly Robertson, Beth Stinson, Rosalinda Noriega, Andras Jones, Jerry Beard, Tammy Martin, Zack Carlson, Anna Oxygen, Mirah Yom Toz Zeitlyn, and musicians Donna Dresch and Scott Seckington, and many, many more…
The Transfused is a post-apocalyptic vision of multi-gendered mongrel people finding community and empowerment under the oppressive rule of The Corporation. The soundtrack is now being used in a midwestern university curriculum as part of an economics and poli-sci class.
The entire production was done without corporate sponsorship, and gave $5000 of its profits back to the community, with donations to non-profits including Books to Prisoners and Stonewall Youth. Though there are no plans to re-stage “The Transfused,” a video of the live performance is available for rental at Rainy Day Records in Olympia, WA.
"The Transfused" was produced for a sold out one-time run of eight shows in July 2000 at Olympia’s historic Capitol Theater.
El Corazón Deck
Where Culture, Justice & Community Intersect
El Corazón Deck is a teaching and learning tool, designed with students and educational and organizational leaders and professionals, to inspire relevant, dynamic critical thinking and explore the ways in which culture, justice, and community relate to and impact topics such as cultural values & identities, current events, history, colonization, systemic oppression, stereotypes & assumptions, microaggressions & micromessages, and unconscious bias.
Use El Corazón Deck to examine the ways its categories and topics intersect with our respective communities’ struggles, and how collective liberation can emerge through individual recognition and ownership of experiences, histories, and cultural perspectives.
The deck can be used as is, or you can utilize the blank cards to tailor culturally relevant lessons to your specific needs.
El Corazón Deck is also available as a full curriculum, with implementation support and corresponding, individualized materials, as well as online and in-person train the trainer modules.
El Corazon Deck Reviews
Interactive cards were awesome. Very interactive activities.
I loved how collaborative and productive these cards and this workshop was.
I loved how it was very hands-on and we were able to collaborate in order to make a project
I loved how interactive and useful it was for bringing social justice into the classroom
— Anonymous Sources
I like the opportunity given to the participants to collaborate and build the space.
I like that we were able to actually work with her peers and brainstorm the possibilities of what a grassroots action would look like
It was very helpful and applicable to real scenarios
It gave me an outlet to bring issues up to others in a workshop setting
— Anonymous Sources
I really enjoyed the creative and critical thinking and collaborative process of this work I would love a deck!
I liked how we discussed topics and issues that affect our communities and selves.
Loved the visual aid/manipulatable of el Corazon deck as a way to stimulate dialogue about social justice intersections to fuel student-driven projects