“At least in my practice, kinship has a kind of materiality. Because when I go through the process of quilting and I’m pulling from for the most part, I’m often working with fabrics that bring their own histories with them or they have their own connections to family and to physical blood family in my life, but also former lovers, close friends.”

“I’m seeking out an empathetic connection between myself and perhaps an imagined past, or people in my life that I didn’t get to know well and wished I knew better.”

“An empathetic process with materials is an understanding that pieces or materials, especially maybe moments of peace, really prompt the way that I begin imagining or thinking or approaching the next piece.”

“Every piece or every vessel that I’ve made has been a container for me to understand my connection to other people and so they all become very specifically tailored towards how someone chooses or doesn’t choose to interact with me, or if it’s actually physical or passive interaction.”

“When [my students] confide in me about their challenges and feelings, I try to reflect on the emotions I felt at the same age, yet also relate to them person to person, balancing my roles as teacher, mentor, confidante, and as someone they trust who might understand where they are coming from.”

“Empathy is all about genuinely connecting with another person or the situation as a whole. And to me it feels like collaging is also grounded in the connecting, or finding the symmetries between the physical and even the emotional one.”

“For me, my weaving is a place of healing and of repair, it’s not the place to go feel the feelings. It’s actually to calm the feelings for me through that repetitive motion. As someone who is wired for too much empathy I have found weaving is my medicine.”