ChokeCherry,  2015

During my graduating year, I explored questions of culture and the ways community shapes identity. This work became a mediator for my reflections, drawing on the crafting practices and techniques I learned in adolescence.

The piece expresses both appropriation and preservation within the community I was raised in—reflecting my relationship to a culture not my own by race, but one I grew up closely connected to. Through its process of “preservation,” the work also speaks to the history of assimilation imposed on Indigenous peoples of North America.

Ultimately, it acknowledges humanity’s continual cycle of learning and unlearning—as the wheel turns.