The home in my work reflects my own–one of a young family where the cycles of maintenance are magnified. Repetition and hands play key roles, being overactive in their affection, cleaning, and chaos. They spend hours cultivating their home–loading the dishwasher, unloading the laundry, cooking dinner, making the bed, and on. They go about their daily routines like the seasons, repeating on an accelerated 24-hour cycle. 

Their wide and strong bodies are workers’ bodies, recalling the workforce in Diego Rivera, Stanley Spencer, and WPA era works. Like Spencer who “observed the sacred quality in the most unexpected quarters” of his hometown, and like many types of mandalas throughout history, my work argues for sanctity on the smallest and most mundane level. Their 24 hour cycle repeats through lunch prep and story time, crowning those moments with tangible boredom, precision, and attention in the face of a fleeting day.  

In our own lives, we feel how the hours pass slowly and the days pass quickly as we grow into the roles we play within our families and homes. The speed of the daily repetition asks us to be strong, committed, creative, and most of all loving. With a committed love for our homes and relationships, we can better notice the small moments of life happening around us. We can protect our own self destructive angst from taking over those smallest, most boring, most droning moments of our domestic day. We can humor ourselves in their endlessness as acts that unite all of us as we maintain home. 

In this current era that glorifies the post-worthy and glamorous moments, our recommitment every day to caring for home is a tether to humility and love. My work is my own commitment to myself that I am not above caring for the smallest of things. My work articulates and celebrates the significance of everyday life.