Thank you Arts Council for Monterey County for an Individual Established Artist Grant!

I am beyond grateful to have  been awarded an Individual Established Artist Grant from the Arts Council for Monterey County @arts4mc. Thank you to this wonderful organization for your support and for elevating quality of life here through your mission! This aid will help me to bring a project to life in our community this year that I have been dreaming of for a long time, and I’m so excited to begin building new relationships around this work, which I hope brings healing to people in threshold times. Please reach out if this resonates as I build a network to help this work land in the right place and hands. Here is the description of “Beauty Comes of All Things”:

“Ferns are ancient. They are truly our elders and embody powerful wisdom that can benefit our lives. Every spring, our beloved sword ferns send up spiraling fiddleheads amidst tall green fronds, as the rusty senescence of past growth cascades back down to the soil below. To witness this trilogy of life stages all in one plant – birth, life, and return -- is breathtaking and reassuring. We live in a culture that is still learning how to courageously accept death as part of life. I believe that fern language can help ease our fear of endings, instill trust in the cycles of life, and be a balm to our spirits in times of illness or decline. As such, I am proposing to create a triptych mural entitled Beauty Comes of All Things that magnifies the poetics of sword fern fronds in three stages. This will be crafted on robust linen canvas printed with natural dyes and iron water and consist of three 6’x6’ panels. It will ideally be donated to a local hospital where it can be seen by patients in palliative care, the ER, ICU, or in a courtyard. This fern imagery will also inform the design of a two-sided, organic cotton “thresholder” lap blanket that can be given to people facing their own end. One side will feature fiddleheads, the other re-furling fronds. This blanket, which may be distributed by social workers or hospice caregivers, can become a key transitional object that can bring solace and acceptance to patients and their beloveds. (Title quote source: Dr. Mary C. Neal’s insight from a near-death experience that helped her navigate the loss of her son).”