Hello, all! After an exciting evening, I am happy to update with progress on a recently developed project that continues my work from last fall: Techne.

I was recently asked by the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History to participate in a one-night event titled Radical Fibers. The event combined multiple theme-led  activities that focused on remixing textiles. For my part, I asked participants to weave with me using small laser cut looms and tools. The small woven tapestries each hold a small colored LED. While the woven pieces themselves are only 4.5x4.5 inches, the completed circuit would combine 8 rows of 8 colored LEDs to create a giant tapestry/quilt woven with an imbedded reactive matrix. There were many collaborators of all ages during the free four hour event who contributed to the completion of five circuit squares.

As promised to the many curious and interested parties, I am making my loom model available for download here. This loom is modeled using 3D software Sketchup and arranged for the laser cutter in Adobe Illustrator. I've also updated this model after the fibers event to reflect collaborator suggestions. Of course, you may have to adjust the model for settings on your own laser cutter.

It was an incredible experience working with the community on this extensive project! While I have made no arrangements for any future collaborative experiences or display exhibition, I am excited to continue reaching out to collaborators to complete the total circuit quilt. Thank you to the many contributors who assisted in weaving, asked about the project, and offered insight or helpful suggestions! Additionally, many thanks to the MAH for hosting the event and contributing to the completion of the project! As always, I will continue to update on the future of the circuit quilt as the project develops.

Graduate school: halfway done! Many milestones have been reached in the last few months, including building a body of work that I plan to continue to refine, cementing my project group research and concepts, forming my thesis committee, and establishing a general research for the next year of work I will produce!

Although textiles and circuits are still an intuitive and fruitful aspect of my work, I am now more firmly invested in focusing my thesis work on the animals that produce these technologies: people. I have always been interested in why we do the things we do and feel the way we feel, especially in relationship with the sublime and the mythological. My work has traditionally held a religious subtext that is manifested through illustrations, so I began an introspective journey relating this context to my childhood and my long-running relationship with organized religion in direct opposition to my own sexuality. 

Following this direction, I began work on a narrative in multiple parts featuring the sexually intimate moments of Jesus Christ through biblical stories, titled Queer Mythos. Combined with my own personal narrative, this project began to shape into a comic-style booklet series that I will likely continue to illustrate throughout the Summer. In the larger focus of my thesis work, I now imagine Queer Mythos as a parcel of the final presentation. 

While my physical work may manifest as queer observations through a religious context, the research extended from this platform has been focused on these subjects through a technological lens. My abstract for this body of work (attached below) initiates an investigation of bodies living in the post-digital through concepts of spirituality, sexuality, and sensuality. This research extends into questions about avatars, virtual realities, and tele-relationships. Although this work is fresh from the womb (so to speak), my initial Summer research includes a thorough gathering of critical writings and projects that explore these concepts.

​Conclusively, I am back in the sexy saddle.

Click above to read my blog entry that initiated this research (meta).