artist statement

The point of the work is to integrate with the infinite source of our beings.

people don’t need to outsource labor when they remember the art of crafting our lives is within them. Outsourcing labor through colonization has not only economically enslaved people, and destroyed vital ecosystems in the process, it also relinquishes their own power as a consciously sovereign being over their life. In this conscious sovereignty, our being, our home, our temple is held in the womb of our cosmic mother. When people craft our existence from this space, we harmonize with cosmic energies. We let go of our need to control when we aren’t focused on oppressing another group. The system of oppression is released when we find a space emerging from oneness.

My process has been cultivating the field of my spiritual garden and sharing this with people(s) through craft journeys and soundscapes. While sharing this process I have opened up a ritual field. I described it like a ritual because I’ve evoked a realm that acknowledges cyclical spirituality of ancestry – a realm or field that relates the minds eye with physical dimensions. I’ve described it like a field because in this space I have acknowledged intersecting fields of a listener, observer of the peace, seer, devout, lawyer (observer of the laws of nature), laborer, policy maker, friend, relative, gardener, existential cultivator, multimedia artist, and resource redistributor (here in the form of second hand clothing and found materials). The roles available to play within a social hierarchy have materialized costumes through dress codes, policy, economics, initiations, and resources. An aspect of policy has been written in the job descriptions of life whereby a being applies to play a character. To put on a garment – a costume – that has been produced within specific means has been to accept (be complicit with) the position of that character.

Garment Costume:

A layer that holds conscious space (material, mental, and spiritual space) for a body to exist in relation to the space they move through and with.

Invest:

Latin – in: into, upon

Latin – vestire: clothe

Latin – vestis: clothing  

I invite each of us to question our investment in roles whose resonance intersects with oppression.

When and where these specific means of material and mental production happen to be oppressive, are the places within a costume that my work cultivates transformation. To identify this is to be rooted in presence, to listen and speak through the voice of a heart. To be perpetually present through the entire experiential process... even now, as you are reading this, we acknowledge your presence. In the presence of capitalism, patriarchy, colonization, and racism – the places that they have occupied within the more than human worlds – the conscious integrity of the materials – the roads and channels, the boats, automobiles, weapons, and planes, the roles that navigate through the spaces between – we presence here. Noticing everyone involved in the hierarchies involved – from the person making the laws, to the person on the factory line who has been economically enslaved. When the means of material and mental production are based in eternal awareness (past, present, and future - an integrated knowing beyond time), we may have clarity around what and how we are regenerating through our interconnected relations with the earth and cosmos. When we act from this space, we can respond to the local qualities of time and seasonal cycles.

The field that I have opened up through this ritual has been a practice of opening up identities that are allowed space to be in eternal awareness that are rooted in our experience of presence – and to regenerate through these means. Here I’ve explored – how can I be the policy creator and laborer of my own existence? – And then those roles dissolve because they don’t have the same power dynamic when they are embodied within me – one being. Open power recontextualized as love has become a deeply felt space of craft. Crafting my thoughts, crafting the garden of my soul(s)- tending to them. Tending to my spiritual practice through and as my art practice.

I invite you to enter into this shared field of ritual where we are reweaving our existence together through our spirits.