"The choice to use embellishment to tell these stories works in a few ways. First, as a process, the act of hand-sewing reflects the constant emotional labor that it takes to live with, grow through, and to share my history of trauma. Instead of stitching with embroidery floss which can be blended more easily to appear seamless, beads remain visible as individual units, each a marker of a single pass of the needle, an expression of labor in time permanently recorded. I use that impression of labor as a backdrop for another primary function of the beadwork and perhaps its most immediate – the apparent beauty that casts a veneer over the underlying darker narrative. In simplest terms my use of embellishment is just sugarcoating. In my personal life I have found that in order to get anyone to listen to my story at all I’ve had to lighten the details significantly, use comforting language, even supplement with humor. To recount the weighty suffering that accompanies sexual trauma with a sense of levity is both an internal coping mechanism and a conditioned response from growing up in an environment that constantly warned me that my feelings would make others uncomfortable, so in order to spare anyone else from hurting I should protect them from what hurts me. It’s the equivalent of telling young girls to keep smiling, repress any difficult emotions, remain peaceful and accommodating. Using these soft sparkling objects to tell my story is not an endorsement of this message, it’s simply a reflection of my learned communication style as a survivor of the kind of insidious emotional abuse not just inflicted by the patriarch of my individual household, but by the misogynistic cultural makeup of the entire community in which I was raised."

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"I don’t expect everyone who sees one of my sculptures to know exactly what it’s about nor do I assume they’ll always read the press release or backstory. However, most people have their own connection to this kind of content in some form or another, and what I do expect is that anyone who looks at my work will meet it from whatever level they’ve suffered a relatable pain. I imagine someone might just see a beautiful sparkling object that took an exhaustive amount of effort while another might not be able to un-see a child’s vagina, and either response is ok. It’s whatever you can connect to that validates your own personal experiences."

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- 2019 feature, questions by Andreana Donahue

See full interview here.