‘as sunlight crept across the porch’

 This body of work begins at the porch: a space suspended between shelter and wilderness, where human life brushes quietly against the lives of birds. As a child, I sat beside my nana in the summer watching hummingbirds collide at the feeder, their tiny bodies vibrating with urgency. We sat in silence. Instead, we listened; to rustling leaves, distant calls, wings against humid air. Those moments taught me that observation is not passive. To watch closely is to enter another rhythm of living. After experiencing trauma, I returned to birds and to the rituals of watching them. I became drawn to the ways they grieve, adapt, rebuild, and remember. Birds gather fragments of the world; twigs, bark, thread, plastic, fur, and weave them into temporary sanctuaries capable of holding warmth and vulnerability. Their nests mirror the fragile ways humans construct safety through memory, routine, intimacy, and place.

I create images that feel suspended between presence and disappearance. The mulberry paper tears easily, stains deeply, and carries the evidence of touch, like skin. My process is slow and repetitive, echoing the labor of nest-building and the quiet persistence of care. I think of porches, trees, and nests as living archives that absorb grief, weather, sound, and return. The birds in my work are not symbols; they are witnesses sharing the same unstable landscapes humans inhabit. I am interested in the moment where observation becomes reciprocal, where the bird watches back, where the body softens into stillness, where sanctuary emerges not as permanence or escape, but as an ongoing act of attention. Silence in my work is never empty. It is full of inherited sound, environmental memory, and the lingering presence of those who taught me how to listen.