2025
Medium: Wet felted wool & salvaged thread; natural rust + tea + acorn dye
Dimensions: 39″ × 12″ × 0.5″
Price / Status: $1122 — Not for sale
Exhibition History: STRATA III, Verum Ultimum (Oregon), 2025
Self Portrait, Art Center Sarasota, 2025
Themes: Self-portrait; perfectionism; ADHD; CPTSD; rupture and repair; endurance; raw vulnerability
Artist Statement:
Battle-Weary is a fiber self-portrait in sensation rather than likeness — an embodiment of living with complex PTSD, ADHD, perfectionism, and the relentless internal wars they bring. Made from hand-felted wool and reclaimed fibers, the piece reflects the cyclical nature of trauma: rupture and repair, wounds reopened and stitched again.Wet felting itself becomes metaphor — fibers first coaxed gently, then coerced through pressure, tearing, and violence before contracting into rigid form. Throughout the process, I alternated between destruction and healing: ripping open, suturing together, layering scars into the fabric of the work. Each torn edge, stitch, and tangled thread carries memory in various stages of healing.At its core, the piece reveals raw exposure — nerves unraveling into strands that spill downward like residue of emotional labor. Yet the edges remain bound, imperfect but insistent, a testament to endurance and repair. Battle-Weary speaks to too-much-ness, otherness, and the tension between yearning for closeness and bracing for harm — ultimately offering a quiet archive of survival and self-forgiveness.While rooted in deeply personal experience, these patterns of coercion and recovery echo broader human struggles with constraint and autonomy. The cyclical nature of healing — the way progress spirals through setback and breakthrough rather than moving in straight lines — speaks to experiences that transcend individual trauma. Communities, families, and cultures navigate similar cycles of damage and repair across generations, finding ways to transform inherited wounds into sources of resilience. The materials themselves, reclaimed and remade through patient labor, hold the memories of other lives and other histories — ultimately offering a quiet archive of survival and self-forgiveness.
