My linocut prints in this series each begin with "There's Too Many Of You Crying," and I'm utilizing Marvin Gaye's song lyrics to respond and bring attention to injustices in our country.

In "There's Too Many Of You Crying: With Liberty and Justice for All," I am responding to the ever present threat to our democracy that has been a part of our reality in the United States since Trump was first elected in 2016.

“There’s Too Many Of You Crying: Bans Off Our Bodies,” is a series of ongoing linocuts that were born out of personal frustration with how we (as a culture) fall short when it comes to protecting women’s reproductive rights and bodily autonomy. I printed the repeating phrases of “What’s Going On” and “Don’t Look Away” directly onto the first fourteen pages of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. I chose green ink as my printing color to stand in solidarity with others in the abortion rights movement. Political leaders are not doing enough if our lives and liberties are consistently threatened in the place in which we are told that we should feel the most safe–our own bodies. 

When we create space in our lives and our work to love, listen to, connect with, and care for others, we create the possibility of having an immeasurable positive impact on the health and sustainability of our communities. Beginning in 2016, much of my social practice and mixed media work centers and amplifies collective stories with an emphasis on women’s experiences and the value of relationships and connectivity. In my mixed media work, I use found and personal heirlooms and objects, depictions of nature, text, and symbolic imagery to create work that explores identity, sense of place and belonging.

My artwork is both inspired by nature and fueled by my commitment to create work that inspires and encourages care for others and for the places, relationships, and liberties that are sacred to us. I believe that art has the power to uplift, transform, elevate, and restore community members who interact in a shared space. 

Utilizing flowers as a subject, my mixed media artwork Butterfly Waystation is a symbolic representation of the positive, loving, and uplifting energy that sustains, supports, protects, and deepens friendships, relationships, and connections within a community. Each painted flower was carefully selected to communicate strength, healing, hope, resistance, joy, adaptability, justice, positive change, rebirth, transformation, and courage.

The concept of a waystation is borrowed from the idea of a Monarch Waystation–an outdoor garden space that provides food, shelter, and other resources necessary for monarchs to produce successive generations and sustain their migration. When we call attention to and intentionally provide the energy, love, and support that we and others need to live and thrive, we create the possibility to provide a level of community care that encourages growth and positive change.

In January-March of 2022, I created The Balsa Butterflies–a series of 76 painted and linocut printed 4”x4” wood panels that honored and celebrated important women who have loved, challenged, healed, and stood next to me and each other in community. After sharing the collection at a community arts event in Charlotte, I individually mailed the panels to each of women along with a pre addressed and stamped flower postcard and the invitation to “write, collage, draw, or paint your love and gratitude for a woman that is important to you on the postcard and send it to me.” The envelopes that are sewn to the bottom of Butterfly Waystation hold the postcards that were sent back to me by the women who chose to participate. Their messages further value and emphasize the exchange of energy in the form of communication, love, and care that supports and sustains strong communities.

Refusing To Give Up Hope, triptych, mixed media on wood panels, left panel 30"x64”, center panel 36"x36”, right panel 30"x52”, 2023.

In “Refusing To Give Up Hope,” I am exploring and making connections between themes that I have been addressing in my artwork since 2016: identity, community care, and social justice. This artwork is connecting the dots between the vulnerable feelings that I experience daily as a teacher, woman, and mother at the hands of harmful systems of power and a culture that continues to accommodate violence and it was born out of personal frustration with how we (as a culture) fall short when it comes to protecting women and children. Political leaders are not doing enough if our lives and liberties are consistently threatened in the places in which we are told that we should feel the most safe–our homes, our schools, and our own bodies.

This is a small selection of the artwork that I have made for the people that I love and care for.

In January-March of 2022, I created The Balsa Butterflies–a series of 76 painted and linocut printed 4”x4” wood panels that honored and celebrated important women who have loved, challenged, healed, and stood next to me and each other in community. After sharing the collection at a community arts event in Charlotte, and beginning on January 2, 2023 I individually mailed the panels to each of women along with a pre addressed and stamped flower postcard and the invitation to “write, collage, draw, or paint your love and gratitude for a woman that is important to you on the postcard and send it to me.” The envelopes that are sewn to the bottom of Butterfly Waystation hold the postcards that were sent back to me by the women who chose to participate. Their messages further value and emphasize the exchange of stories, love, and care that supports and sustains strong communities.

Text on the Balsa Butterfly Poster Print:

“You are part butterfly,” Grandma Motil used to say. While I felt the warmth of her words as a child, I didn’t realize at the time that she was actually sharing a part of our Czech family history in that our name motyl, means butterfly, a symbol of growth, transformation, and renewal.

Each butterfly is painted on a wood panel. Spanish for raft, balsa is a strong, soft, flexible, fast-growing tree, considered a “nurse tree” for how it protects the trees that surround it in the humid rainforests of South and Central America. 

The panels are linked through the repeated pattern of printed growth rings. Growth rings serve as indicators of a tree’s age and experience during each year of a tree’s life. 

Each butterfly honors one of many women and nonbinary people who have loved, challenged, healed, and stood next to me and each other in community. 

Together we feel seen.

We are all part butterfly.