Into the Wild 19

16.5 x 15 inches

Chine Collé collage with Phototransfer, and Linoleum Block Elements on Cotton Rag Paper.

2022

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Into the Wild is a chine collé collage limited edition collage series that intertwines the various creative approaches that I've recently been experimenting with. Through my collage and mark-making, I generate an abundance of elements, textures and shapes that sometimes end up as orphans in my studio. When these randoms end up together in an unorganized stack on my desk, I really loved how they looked.

So I decided to create a series that remixes all of these elements into new stories. One of my core values is that I strive to not be wasteful in my creative process and to find a use for everything that I create. I work with paper, and so I honor the fact that the paper was once alive in the form of a tree. I find beauty in the reinterpretation of my thoughts and my ideas.

This new chine collé series blends my characters, nature symbols and food elements that I've been incorporating into my ancestral food series. The result is a playful collection that celebrates the different aspects that make me a wild person. I love the word WILD. For me, being wild means being grounded in the life force that I have because I am connected to nature, I am a part of her. I grow like a wildflower. I am expansive like a wild ecosystem. I respect the wild aspects of my garden and ecosystem.

To be WILD means to be my full embodied self, unlimited by the entrenched narratives of colonialism and structural racism. This series reflects my journey to becoming a more wild femme through all of the things that I engage with, through my artistic choices, through the food I put in my body, through the way that I interact with nature, through the way I care for my garden and my animals - always from a place of love and nourishment.