2018 - 2022

I created this series during an art residency at Look Out Arts Quarry in Bellingham WA.  I applied for the residency after having my thyroid removed from cancer in 2018 which sent me into a long period of depression. I now must rely on medication to keep me alive for the rest of my life, a reality that continues to be challenging to accept. My goal for this residency was to explore these complicated feelings of grief and joy that come with a huge life change, the shadow of depression and the light of a higher power. I worked on bristol paper and found wood in the forest around the camper I lived in for 4 weeks. I worked with gouache and ink on primed paper or salvaged wood adding air dry clay sculptures.

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A part of this residency is intended to be shared with the community. I held weekly collaborative doodle nights which I advertised for with hand drawn signs left around the communal kitchen on site. Instead of focusing on trauma as a topic we created whimsical collaborative doodles through the drawing game Exquisite Corpse. At the end of my residency I mounted every doodle created during these nights and hung them on the adjacent wall of my Light & Shadow series. To make the night more special and to show my gratitude for the communities involvement, I worked with local artists to print copies of every drawing created at our doodle nights and bound them into a coloring book to which I hand drew the cover. I gave one to every doodle night participant at the closing reception along with a hand drawn pin title "FEATURED DOODLER".