‘still they sing ’

 My first memories of birds are quiet ones, sitting beside my nana in the stillness of summer, watching hummingbirds slam their small, delicate bodies into others for their chance at the feeders. We didn’t speak. We listened. In that silence, I began to understand their language not as words, but as gestures, warnings, rhythms. After being assaulted, I turned back to that silence. Back to birds. I watched them grieve, adapt, and communicate. I learned they pass knowledge through generations, calls, songs, rituals. I learned they mourn. And they learn. And they linger.

 Through colored pencil and stone lithography on soft, delicate mulberry paper, I explore the fragility of memory and the persistence of presence. These materials tear easily, hold impressions deeply, and speak softly. The birds in my work are not symbols. They are witnesses. This is a space where birds are heard, and trees remember. Where silence is not empty, but full of story.

 My workis a collection of quiet confrontations, moments of communication passed between bodies, across branches, under the weight of memory. My work is rooted in these observations of nature. I study mimicry and the ways humans and animals mirror one another in survival. I hear my nana in the bark of trees, “Don’t pick at the bark, it kills the tree!” But I’ve learned that sometimes, picking is what allows healing to begin.