In the Studio
The studio is where my thinking happens. Before an idea becomes words, it has to pass through my hands: through water, fibre, ash, ink and paint. I do not arrive in the studio with finished answers. I arrive with questions about faith, grief, desire and belonging, and I let the materials respond.
“The studio is where I learn that nothing is ever truly lost. Burned, soaked, beaten or pressed, every material carries what it was into what it becomes. So do we.”
Slowness
My process is slow by nature. Paper cannot be rushed. Fibre has to soak, be beaten and broken down, and only then can it be lifted from the vat, sheet by sheet, pressed and left to dry. Apples burn for hours before they become ash. Prints are pulled one at a time, and paintings are built up in layers that are allowed to drip, bleed and settle. This slowness is not something I work around; it is the work. Repetition becomes ritual, and ritual becomes a way of paying attention.
Undoing
Much of what I make begins with something being undone. I pulp old artworks into new paper, burn fruit into charcoal, dissolve fibre into water and press marks into surfaces. In the studio, breaking down is never only destruction. It is the first stage of remaking. Nothing is thrown away: the ash, the offcuts, the failed sheets and the stained water all hold a memory of what came before, and they find their way back into the work.
Honesty
The studio is also a place of honesty. It is where I can hold the parts of my life that are not always welcome elsewhere: being queer and Christian, carrying grief, carrying inherited struggles, and carrying love. The materials do not ask me to separate these things. Paper holds them together, the way water holds fibre before it becomes a sheet.
Research
My studio practice is also my research. Every process is a way of testing an idea through the body, and I document everything, from the first fibre to the final print, because the making itself is part of the meaning. Photographs, videos and notes become their own archive, keeping what would otherwise disappear.
Coming apart
Above all, the studio has taught me that coming apart is not the end. What is burned, soaked, beaten or pressed does not vanish; it changes form. I return to the studio again and again to witness that change, and to trust that what has been broken down can still be gathered into something whole.