Rose-Colored Windows
A large-scale interactive installation and accompanying works inspired by traditional stained glass windows reimagined through individual layers of transparent vinyl designs that uses color, light and incidental beauty to celebrate complexity of experience, hope, and resiliency, in the body and mind.
Rose-Colored Windows celebrates the complexity of human experience and how we choose to find hope and resiliency as it intertwines with emotion, stress, healing, and more. This interactive installation of 75+ individually crafted transparent vinyl works is inspired by stained glass “Rose Windows” which were meticulously crafted in their designs to elicit feelings of awe and wonder and let in light in buildings of worship built throughout the Medieval and Gothic periods. These mosaic tessellations often broached complex subjects such as The Universal Laws of the Cosmos, the human psyche, and celestial planes of existence. And in the spirit of those original pieces, this work, entitled “Rose-Colored Windows” looks to cast the same reverence as the source inspiration, but this time towards the complexity and multifaceted endeavor of living within a human body. Facets of life, like the struggle of living with mental and physical health challenges intertwining with themes of hope, experience, and resilience. Each uniquely drawn vinyl design represents layers of life, positives and negatives, hopes and fears, struggles and triumphs, and invites the viewer to create their own combinations to add to the larger kaleidoscope. Individually, these window pieces were each deliberately designed to defy organized perfection and welcome incidental beauty: never perfectly fitting in the gaps of the next, oftentimes overlapping, sometimes creating new designs and colors and often creating muddiness and obscurity. Never meant to be a puzzle to solve, each window was created to be a physical manifestation of the awe-inspiring, non-linear journey of our mental fortitude.
at the
Chehalem Cultural Center
Feb- May 2025
Rose-Colored Windows
At Sisters Coffee in the Pearl for the month of May, sponsored by Cascadia Healthcare for their HEART celebration and Mental Health Awareness Month
Rose-Colored Windows celebrates the complexity of mental health and how we find hope as it intertwines with emotion, stress, brain chemistry, our nervous systems, healing, relationships, and more. We want things to be simple and easy, transparent, perfectly fitting together, but the reality is that, when it comes to mental health, it’s not, it’s complex, and layered, and so much of the struggle isn’t visible, and there is a beauty and reverence in that that deserves to be honored and praised. This installation is inspired by stained glass Rose Windows which throughout history have represented universal laws of the cosmos and the psyche, serving as representations of wonder and awe at heaven. But in being human, we are beings who encounter all the different facets of living with mental and physical health challenges, like depression, disability, grief, loneliness, psychosis, addiction, and more and our ability to find hope again, process, experience, and move forward, especially as women, shows a resilience that deserves to be marveled at. This is what these individual Rose Windows represent, they are physical manifestations of the awe-inspiring, non-linear journey of our mental fortitude.
Each layer’s design doesn’t perfectly fit with the next, they often overlap, sometimes creating new designs or colors and oftentimes creating muddiness and obscurity. And this parallels our experience of being human- we idealize control, planning something so well that it all fits together or works out, but this installation is built to be varying, responsive, and adaptable, just like our experience is. There is no puzzle to be solved, no perfect combination that shows each of the designs and colors perfectly, the beauty is in the dynamic and developing complexity.
We traditionally think that looking at life through ‘rose colored glasses’ is a naive or bad thing, but for so many people experiencing mental health challenges we are fighting to see the world with a little bit of rosyness- hope and compassion, and that is something to be celebrated.
The NeuroWillow Tree
at 4Culture in Seattle, WA until Jan 31st as a part of Shine On Seattle put on by Lusio Light
A whimsical peek inside the neural networks of our brains- there is a constellation of neurons firing, sending electrical signals to experience, think, and feel. While the entanglement and intricacy of the Neurowillow mirrors the roots and branches of a tree, it also focuses on the knots and tangles that disrupt the flow of these electrical signals. There is wonderment, splendor, and mystery with a Weeping Willow but there is still pain, disarray and confusion in this installation, inspired by my experience with chronic migraines, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, and mental illness. The willow tree constantly adapts and heals, just like we do with neuroplasticity- we will always be responding to sensations, in a symbiotic relationship with the world in and around us as beings made of stardust. Illness and pain are parasitic but this installation highlights the awe inspired by the constant resilience of life.
Neural Nebulous
-within the trees-
Lusio Light Festival 2021
A visual constellation relating the brain’s complex neural networks to the unknowns of space. This light art installation is made from copper and is installed directly into a tree on the orchard at the Mary Olson Farm, Seattle, WA for the Lusio Light Festival August 2021.
Neural Nebulous
(G43.711)
At the Alberta Abbey
This installation envisions complex migraines, the breakdown in transmission and communication and how they feel with knots, confusion and the cosmic force that it takes to deal with such a complex, painful condition. This work represents the elusive neurological processes including neurons and neurotransmitters and the (lack of) scientific knowledge about migraines. So much is unknown about why migraines happen so this installation is how I understand and visualize my own experience with chronic migraines, attempting to wade through the tangled web of pain, dysfunction, vibrations and -spaceiness-.
Neural Nebulous
Portland Winter Light Festival 2021
Hotel Eastlund Wine Bar
This installation is part of the Neural Nebulous series, a site-specific installation that visualizes our brain’s neurology and related it to the unknowns of space, sharing how the artist imagines these vast networks of neurotransmitters, neurons, dendrites, and more that compose our brains. This installation envisions complex migraines, the breakdown in transmission and communication and how they feel with knots and confusion, and the cosmic force that it takes to deal with such a painful, complicated experience.
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