hand dyed fabric, wool felt, steel pins, sterling silver, fine silver, 14k gold solder, pearls, found objects.

On the Pincushion:

The ubiquity of the tomato pincushion was the genesis of this art piece. Everyone has seen the tomato pincushions in the sewing kits of parents and the aisle of the craft store. Tomatoes (the eating variety) have transformed from robust heirloom varieties of to the white and mealy grocery store orbs barely fit for eating. The tomato pincushion has undergone the same dilution. Through sourcing natural fabrics and dyeing them, to stuffing it with traditional materials (beans, wool, and hair) I sought to rediscover what made the tomato pincushion the touchstone of homespun charm that it is.
Similarly, the meditative process of making the dozens and dozens of pins – attaching small pieces of sterling silver wire to steel pins, gently drawing a rivet over the delicate pearls – became a meditation on those items we used to use make and use as a culture versus those which we purchase and consume today. A few wasps (as other straight pins), buzz around the tomato. They remind us of the natural state of the tomato, and they signify the industriousness embodied in an object as humble as a pincushion.

On the Spool:As silly as it may sound, I often feel as though I am rescuing objects as I snatch them off the ground and place them to a place of reverence in my curio cabinet. For months I obsessed over the shape of the wooden spools in my collection - their simplicity, smoothness, and their differences from the variety of plastic spools on which I buy my thread today. Inlaying sterling silver into the wood of the spool was a new technique I’d been itching to try for a while and it seemed an appropriate way to draw new attention to the object.

On the Thimble:

This antique thimble, from my mother’s collection, was split and squared from use - the metal torn in four places. I cleaned, annealed, and reshaped the piece. Then, using thin gold wire and solder, filled the bare spaces with new metal. I realize I could have done the same with sterling wire and solder, and after replacing the texture my intervention would have been completely unnoticeable. That was not the point. I wanted the history of use to be present on the thimble, to add to the aesthetic beauty of the object.