My practice explores how power structures shape what we see, conceal truths, and influence interpretation. I work with text and found images, using free-motion embroidery, digital fabrication, and printmaking to transform fragments of political rhetoric and public messaging. By isolating these fragments, I examine how meaning shifts through absence, moving between clarity and ambiguity. I bring this approach to subjects including gun violence and the refugee crisis.

What began as an experiment to incorporate embroidery into my paintings evolved into an exploration of how thread and fabric can express complex ideas. Free-motion embroidery, which uses a special presser foot on a sewing machine so the fabric can move freely, has become central to my work. I paint with thread, building layers of dense stitching that can obscure, distort, or alter an image. I embrace the process’s physical qualities, such as puckering and tangled threads, and the time and labor each piece requires.

I also turn to nature. Embroidered micro-views of fruits, vegetables, and flowers offer a way of exploring shape, texture, and detail through line and stitch. The same attention to fragments and cropping that drives my political work lets me see familiar forms anew.