Artist Statement:

Using cloth, gesture, and repetition, I construct installations and durational performances to explore the embodied nature of spiritual experience. Drawing from medieval women's histories and mystical texts, these projects reframe household tasks as contemplative practices that reveal spiritual potential within the mundane rhythms of care and maintenance. 

Laundry/Ecstasy is inspired by Clare of Assisi, the patron saint of laundry. For eight hours in the former wash house of the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in Washington DC, I ironed linens that belonged to five generations of women in my family. Starting at dawn, I repeatedly pressed and folded each piece of hand-embroidered cloth, taking one thirty-minute and two fifteen-minute breaks. 

The video documents the passage of time through a patch of sunlight moving across the wall and the sound of church bells tolling on the hour. Viewers are invited to see but not enter this cloistered space, to witness the weight of fabric and the rhythm of work that suggests the sacred might be found not only in grand gestures, but in the materiality of daily life.