Born and raised in Moline, IL; Ames has been my home for over a decade along with my partner/collaborator, Jason Shaw and daughter Lucille. Alumni of Northern Illinois University, I’m formally trained in oil painting, textiles and art history. Since moving to Ames I’ve found my creative stride through community art organizing, curating, painting murals, writing my book Mend it Better, and opening my apothecary tea bar & gallery. My artwork, zines, and illustrations are collected internationally, including the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Sweden, and my book Mend it Better is distributed worldwide. Funded in part by an Iowa Arts Council project grant, my newest work, the Junk Mail Migration Tapestry, debuted in the fall of 2022 and is currently touring Iowa.

The intersection of nature and humans ignites my curiosity. Though my work is grounded in real life experience and scientific research, at a certain point in the studio, the facts become unhinged, intuition and material experiments take over, and a specific experience becomes universal. Through collaborations with other artists, use of non-traditional spaces, and natural/cast-off materials, my work has developed from singular wall works into interdisciplinary installations that explore themes of decay and restoration. Nature is a beautiful and disgusting collection of interworking parts. They form a vast landscape composed of a multitude of fragments that become the foundation for my practice.

“Artists and scientists are both asking questions about the world, they’re just doing it in different ways”
Alex Braidwood
Director, Iowa Lakeside Lab Artists-in-Residence Program

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