Rooms are, and have always been a chance to curate the personal spaces and pieces that structure my life. The first memory I have of agency over a space is from my family’s move to North Carolina. My mother, in true style, gave my creative voice equal consideration in the process of designing our new home. I kept the many paint chips we collected over that first year, using them to decorate my bedroom walls; eventually, those colors joined the walls themselves as my mother and I painted colorful stars onto the walls with paint-soaked sponges. Bookshelves, dressers and handmade rugs soon filled the space of my room, leaving space for little else. The shelves of my room not only contained books, my ever-present companions, but also came to buckle under the weight of objects I placed into the nooks and crannies. Like their shelf-mates, these objects held stories; old coins, stuffed animals and pieces of bark were as much actors in my life’s story as the characters in the books I voraciously read.
As I grew older, the look of my room changed—but never the process. In the later years of living North Carolina, images joined the collections of objects that filled my space. As always, I paid intense attention to what surrounded me in the most personal of spaces, losing track of time as I turned my bedroom walls into exhibition spaces. Poems, drawings, photographs, letters, tapestries, paintings, magazine pages, ticket stubs…anything holding personal significance found its way onto a wall. In recent years, the idea of personal space has become even more pronounced while living with others. The walls of the spaces in which I live continue to be a reflection of myself, my experiences, and my creative process and create a space that feels like a home.
As I grew older, the look of my room changed—but never the process. In the later years of living North Carolina, images joined the collections of objects that filled my space. As always, I paid intense attention to what surrounded me in the most personal of spaces, losing track of time as I turned my bedroom walls into exhibition spaces. Poems, drawings, photographs, letters, tapestries, paintings, magazine pages, ticket stubs…anything holding personal significance found its way onto a wall. In recent years, the idea of personal space has become even more pronounced while living with others. The walls of the spaces in which I live continue to be a reflection of myself, my experiences, and my creative process and create a space that feels like a home.