 I sometimes forget about my visual arts practice. So thank you for forcing me to do this. No, it's not a force. No, but it really, it's like when you're trying to hustle and make it all happen, trying to figure out what to privilege and when is really hard, what to share and what to say yes to. So this is really, it's been great to just even remember how much joy making brings to me and how in making it's like the most honest work that I do. I was thinking and watching it, listening to all you guys, the writers read and I was just like, ew words, they are so scary to me right now. Like I don't wanna let it out, right? Like I wanna let it out, but I don't wanna tell my story right now. And making is a way that I can like tell my, I can live the story, tell my story, like in the object. So it decentralizes me and whatever the emotional attachment is to the words. So, but mad prompts to writers for writing. So I'm just gonna say that I'm a tactile artist. My work typically has some sort of method or process to it, time, material and process was the sort of the center of my thesis work and it's still the same. And I just wanted to read you a little, cause words from the piece I wrote about time, material and process, I can just, here we go, okay. And I'm gonna put up an image for you. So this is one of my early images. Second work, okay. I was really interested in alien landscapes. I'm interested in what happens after the apocalypse, science fiction, stuff like that. And so I spent about, I'm not even gonna read it yet, but I spent, oh, about a semester traveling to the Southwestern Deserts in the Land Arts Program in graduate school and we were just out in the land. Like, you know, we were lettering two duffel bags and then we're like, make work. And after being really scared, I started to really just like dive back into what do I love, science fiction, what's out here? What is the land telling me to do? These are called Tanahas. They are carved out, these little pods are carved out from water from rain over eons and eons and eons and then soil collects in them because as the climate changes. So the climate changes and it leaves a language behind and that language is the grooves that the water cut into it. So for me, I wanted to replace in some way what was no longer there. So I used this reflective tin and created what I'm calling mushrooms and they reflect the sky and the sky is blue, where the water comes from. And so I just, I wanted to really reflect, try to find a way to reflect absence and like an alien nature of replacing that absence. So that is, so I have this land work. This is another piece that I did. This is on the, what's the popular side of the Grand Canyon? Right, I was on the North side, I guess. And on the North side, it's really beautiful and it's got a lot of aspen trees, just like so many aspen trees. And if you know aspen trees, their life cycle is real, real short. So they just like grow and then fall down. And so there are just tons of just dead tree bodies laying around and I am like fascinated with fabric and pattern and exploring those things in scale. So blowing the scale up and seeing what you can learn from patterns and what does it like to get inside of fiber is something that I always was interested in. And then in terms of time and process, what can I physically do and how can I physically capture that? So I spent days collecting and dragging dead aspen trees and creating this wave or the idea is that it's rushing water coming up over and that the pattern is that of the wave, the pattern is also of a herringbone because all of the pieces are interlaced. But ultimately I'm wanting to create this used pattern to create an element out of dead material, ultimately. And I just like laid down their naked because I wanted scale to show scale. I did not want to put my brown body in the piece but I could not figure out how to show scale. And I didn't wanna put a white body in the piece because then I felt like I'm the artist and I, right? Like I didn't wanna like, I just got really, anyway. So this is how it ended up and some people have given me feedback that my body, something about the brownness of it creates a racial something on the piece which that was not the case. But I'm just sharing, I'm just airing it because it irritated me. So I thought I'd share that with you. I really, I wanted to get more personal or I started to get more personal and I wanted to, I started creating pieces out of hair. And this is from, I'm gonna show you a set from a series called Five Alien Objects of a Domestic Nature. I'm always trying to figure out a new way of seeing things, different perspective from things. I really like process and time involved in making because we have moved out of a culture. We used to be like, oh, I'll pay, how long is that gonna take? Oh, that's how I know it's good. I'll pay a lot of money because it's gonna take a long time, right? Like your time is now it's like, how fast can you get it to me? I will pay anything to get it tomorrow, right? And so I've always wondered what does this do to our relationship to objects, right? Like how do we, I mean, time and attention are ways that we start to, that respect starts to blossom or what have you. So what happens to our objects if it becomes about speed and not taking the time in the process? Anyway, this is a, these are just vessels. I wanted to really, like vessels as a theme for holding knee as a theme for holding space, but also a vessel that does not hold water, right? What is it holding? How does this re-inform what it actually is? Also using hair because this is, this is just, I don't even know if this is relevant or interesting to you, but this hair is cacolon hair. Anybody know what the cacolon? You've been to the hair store, the hair stores, those big pony braids. So a lot of the work that you're seeing are like, it's just like black girl, fake black girl hair. And so that is a powerful significance to me because the role that hair, fake hair, shaving your head, natural hair, relaxed hair, all of this in black, with black women is just like, it's like I've been onslaught with like a hair dialogue and issue, right? Cause like in the black community, go to the beauty salon, it's community is love. I'm in college at like white college in Massachusetts and like people have a lot of questions about what's going on with my hair. Why is it short? Why is it long? What, you know, like can I touch it? Like all of these things. And so how do you own something that provides just like a whole breadth of experiences from like warm and loving to just so annoying? So you do that by you take some time with an object and you imbue it with this fake hair that is so powerful and so potent to my childhood and you turn it into an object, you make it into a sculpture and you breed life into it. And it is an absolutely an alien object. It is, you know, neither, none of these things are used for their purpose but they're meant to highlight their essence. Now I'll just show you some pictures of some alien objects. That's a close up of the pedestal. This is like travel to Atlanta. This is a copper wire. This is a very fine crocheted piece and that is Persian cat hair that I collected from my friend's cat. And I really enjoy in my work in terms of crochet. I could crochet anything. I could like crochet this room. I could crochet a facsimile of you. Like I'm like very good at working with crochet. And but how do you, I just like I wanted to, I like to harvest materials. So not just, not like from like just the wool. Like I do, I love wool. Wool is magical but I love like I'm like, oh I'm so, such one of those nerds. Like I don't know if Gen Xers were like, reduce, reuse, recycle everything. Your cats, your cats disgusting hair out of the brush. Like I want to harvest it and use it. Like so I'm always looking for non-traditional materials to work with and this is, this is a fin, fin. But also questions of what is a teacup and a saucer when they will not hold liquid? What is that? What do you put in that? And it's really just that's the place to start in terms of meditating out. This is a closeup of my cup runneth over. There, my cup runneth over. And I, you know, some of, like I like to work really iteratively, like I just like to, like a ceramist a little bit. I just like to get in there, I get a concept, so alien objects, and then I'm just in vessels. This was like from us just, I was just making vessels, vessels, vessels, vessels, vessels. And then starting to play with the vessels and like starting, this is where you can start to see I'm really, it's like, when you run out of juice, but really like trying to play with how the, what full, what full to empty and just how that plays in this, with against the metal and the hair and the porousness of the vessel. Cause this is not a bunch of hair, I've done a tight weave on some of them. And this is like a really loose weave. And so you can kind of see through it. Let's see what's next. Oh yeah, that's a good picture of that one. This is another, as I call it, Emberasada, and it's just like, I mean, just because I was really embarrassed once when I didn't know that that was called pregnant. And that always like stayed with me language-wise. And then I really enjoyed making this very, when you, I don't know if I have a side view of it, but it really, it's just beautiful. It's beautifully bloated. And it's, I left it without any hair because it sort of disappeared, but it was a very full object. And I just, I really like how it speaks to impermanence. And this is one that my friends at the time loved to call a distended testy. So thanks guys, smart work. But I really, what I really appreciated about that is that working with metal, like it can, we think industrial, it can remove us from like being organic. And this piece with the tight weave, so you can see it's like the hair is tightly woven in there. I've used a tight crochet stitch. Like there's something soft and pliant and human about it. And so I really like distended testy fine. I just really love that the vessel like gives you a sense of elasticity, which was not there when the hair wasn't there, and when it wasn't hanging. So it like, the hanging was really important because it was about how we understand objects in space. Like we have this 2D, we interface in 2D very often. And so I really wanted to create objects that were, okay, what happens when they're coming from the ceiling? How does that change how you interface with the artwork? I just like, I'm wanted out, I had no pedestals. Wow, that was part of that. I wanted to be in space. I wanted sculpture to be installation and not just an object away. I'm sad that I don't have a picture of them all together because they're hung in a, well, I like to think of it as like a stone hinge, sort of like it had a purposeful, sort of magical ritual kind of hanging vibe, but you'll just have to imagine it. So I'm gonna try and get to other. We'll tell you about this. This is actually all garbage. So I was really interested in mapping and like, how do I marry fiber and mapping? And that large piece that I kind of zoomed by, that was a map of a larger area in the desert. I would just go on, walk about, collect things and come and weave it into this map. And so then I did this on a smaller scale in a building between an art department and a design department. And actually this is the art department and this is the design. I went into their computer labs and I just like started taking their garbage and designers eat like shit is what this tells you. It's just like all, and somehow weirdly drink a lot of carton milk, but like it's like Pacheta chips, Lays, Doritos, but always trying to figure out how, what your environment, like what your garbage will tell you about your activity. This is all like some kind of touch screen and everything. This is like some kind of backing office. They were, you know, there's a little making, Dr. Pepper and some Cheetah. So, you know, there's more on the other side, but I ultimately, I was really just like, we have to start thinking about our environments in different ways. How do you, how do you evidence something for people? And so garbage was this really easy and available, you know, sort of thing to study and like the weave, right? Fiber and textiles became a great way to display. This, this is a field sketch and this is 128 foot by 20 foot wide column scaffolding structure that has, is illuminated from the inside from the top and it is filled with over a million linear feet of recyclable polymer twine. And this is, was on the bank of, in Austin, Texas, on the bank of Lady Bird Lake. It's called, we call it Lake, you know, late anyway, Lady Bird Lake is what it's called now. Sorry. And that, and this was just, this was one of like the best experiences of my life because we got a commission. I worked with five other artists and we got a commission to answer that question of what it is to get inside of a fiber. And it was really, it was exciting. It was interactive. The, if you see that is those things that shape is not by mistake, that is the topographical map of the bottom of the lake that we inverted and then carved out, you know, sort of, so you're walking through the terrain of the bottom of the lake and the polymer twine is the negative space. So that's, you're seeing, that's the land that you're able to inhabit. Thank you.