Cellular Anatomy of Despair (With Little Rays of Light Shining Through) — Watercolor pencils, colored pencils, paint pens, ink on watercolor paper.

My art is often about experiencing conflicting emotions, sometimes within a single moment. This is a concept our culture at large wants us to reject. (We must always be happy, positive, and awesome.) Many pieces address the coexistence within us of sadness and happiness, anger and compassion, love and loneliness, and, with this one pictured here, despair and hope.

"Cellular Memories: Regeneration" is for when ideas, thoughts, feelings and emotions, conclusions, desires, wishes, and dreams all coalesce into a cellular ignition of regeneration. Everything is all fired up, the connections are flowing, the barriers fall away, and you are in the zone of excitedly beginning anew.

This piece is very organic and primordial. It is my imaginative cellular representation of when you push through a struggle, or when you have pushed through tough times, there is always light at the end of that and your cells know and feel this (symbolized by the yellow).

This piece is very special to me -- it is about two different themes around the idea of "division" and "separateness" -- one being the kind of division that happens when two people are strongly connected to one another but they are living separate lives. There is a little bit of overlap, like what you would see in a Venn diagram, and that overlap represents the bond that unites them and what they have in common that keeps them connected, but essentially they live in two different universes living two different lives very much apart from each other. This aspect of the work was inspired by Beth Orton, an English singer/songwriter who wrote "look at all these things I'm doing without you..."

The other reference in this piece is about how divided and polarized we are right now as a nation --- yet we share the same physical spaces and we are all under that same big blue sky. Sometimes this division is in the same home or family unit, a work team, a neighborhood. We are living in parallel universes side by side and our commonality, that part of the Venn diagram that overlaps, is getting smaller and smaller.

Twin Hearts

This piece represents the interconnected hearts of two highly connected people. They could be actual twins. Soulmates of any kind. Of course, lovers. Or, deeply bonded partners.

The design is in the shape of the infinity symbol, a figure eight, which represents the concept of both limitlessness or eternity. The piece can be hung vertically or on its side, horizontally, to accentuate this symbolism. The hearts are joined together forever but separate still.

Though not identical, the hearts are very similar, and they share common ties and common threads. The hearts support one another from all directions. Up and down and side by side. They vibrate in their intensity. Yet they are so solidly simple in their connectedness.

The love between twin-hearted people never ends.

This is my imaginary view of what’s happening on a cellular level as we begin and move through the process of forgiveness towards another. To me it happens in stages and layers. A little bit at a time. Each stage builds upon the prior stage. And sometimes we think we have forgiven but then we realize we haven’t and we have to loop back and work on it some more. Like scaffolding. Other times, we’re pretty decided about what we will forgive about the trespass against us. “I’ll forgive this but I can’t forgive that. Not yet at least. And maybe never.” And, “I know I will definitely forgive you at some point but I can’t right now. I’m working out on it though.” Or, “I’ve forgiven you for a lot already but there are still wounds and there is still so much damage and I am still making my way through the path of forgiveness.” With it all there’s always a little bit of yellow light pushing through. (When I say “we” I mean “me.”)

This imagery is an imagined cellular landscape of my cervix, its opening, and surroundings – the site of near constant entry points for probes, examinations, and exploratory surgery -- while awaiting the results of uterine cancer testing. To relieve stress I imagined my cervix bathed in rings of healing yellow light, golden medicinal salve, and cleansing water all encircled by borders of scar tissue and tough, multiple membranes. I imagined it as a portal to the void, with no beginning and no ending, but just an empty cancer-free space.

This art is about the joy and pain of navigating my menstruation for the last forty years. It is also about honoring the end of my "flow" in its various iterations. Though our menstrual periods are an immensely integral, sacred part of our lives -- eliciting a monthly myriad of private emotions, thoughts, and actions -- politics, commercialism, advertising, religious attitudes, and the medical community have all weighed in heavily dictating what is proper, normal, and acceptable about our “monthly cycles.” While these public forces have gained momentum in our culture-at-large, "Flow" recognizes all the women who privately and courageously assimilate with their own bodies month after month, year after year, and seeks to uplift those who struggle with any multitude of uterine battles.