Handwoven Drawings at Matéria Gallery, Cass Corridor in Detroit, Michigan, 2024

My Handwoven Drawings unify the distinct actions of drawing and weaving. I draw and paint on the surface of soft wood, hand cut the painted wood into thin strips, then weave the strips back together on the floor loom. My creative process mimics the natural cycle of creation, destruction, and reintegration. First, there is the making of the drawing on wood – its creation. Then, the painted wood is cut into pieces – its destruction. Finally, the pieces are woven back together with thread - its reintegration. A new form emerges: the Handwoven Drawings.

The drawn imagery in the Handwoven Drawings functions as paracosms that reference disintegration, restoration, and organic growth. My paracosms are idiosyncratic distillations of the landscapes I inhabit where the tree is an animated protagonist. The images emerge from unique trees that can be pinned on a map. Particular trees are true to their time and place, have a long history, and are powerful players in people’s physical, intellectual, and psychological existence. My focus on the deep significance of trees and connection to human wellbeing echoes in a particularly relevant way in our present planetary predicament. We as a global people depend on trees not just as a resourceful commodity and ecological necessity, but also as a stabilizing force in the tumultuous task of existing personally and culturally. Trees perform a supra-natural dance along with humanity that continues to propel and reintegrate us with the future.

The Handwoven Drawings immortalize trees as dynamic players in human existence.