I make work that is in the broadest sense about human relationships to the landscape. In this current body of multimedia tapestries, “People, Places and Things/Gente, Lugares, y Cosas,” the “landscape” is both a specific community in a particular region of the world and the internal emotional journey of a person who has purposely chosen to be a foreigner. It is inspired by my experience two decades ago when I lived in an Ecuadorian village for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer. Everything was disorienting when I first arrived–the mountainous landscape, the language, some aspects of the culture; there was no choice but to adjust, learn the language, and humble myself in the face of many missteps and mistakes.

In these tapestries, recognizable images emerge in some places and are obscured in others, materially expressing the moments of understanding that emerged as I gradually integrated into the community of Quillin, canton of Saraguro, province of Loja, population 60. By mending together disparate materials into something new and whole, I celebrate my memories of that time and the people who were a part of my life (and remain so now). One of the ways that my village neighbors and I built relationships was by doing manual work together, like shelling mountains of corn, making empanadas, spinning wool from the sheep. There is an echo of those repetitive, cumulative activities in many of the processes I use in my art. Ultimately, this work is about human connection to each other and to the landscape, both of which were an inescapable fact of village life.