2019
cotton and glass
55" x 19.25"
In the fall of 2020, just months before the pandemic arrived, I began working on Cathedral during an artist residency at La Macina di San Cresci in Greve, Chianti. The residency was situated on the grounds of the medieval Pieve di San Cresci, a bewitching historical site surrounded by the rolling hills of the Tuscan countryside. The oldest parish church in the region, it eventually fell into ruin and, beginning in the 1960s, was transformed into a creative gathering place for artists and designers.
I have long been fascinated by religious architecture and the intersection of spirituality and art. Churches and cathedrals have always felt distinctly feminine to me—womb-like spaces that offer shelter, contemplation, and transformation. I am drawn to the tension between this sense of softness and sanctuary and the rigid, patriarchal structures often associated with organized Christianity. The candy-colored fantasy of stained glass, with its shifting light and luminous beauty, heightens this contradiction.
In Cathedral, this tension is expressed through the materials themselves. The soft, tactile fields of hand-tied fiber exist alongside the hard, fragile geometry of stained glass. The repetitive act of tying each knot is slow and meditative, requiring patience, muscle memory, and persistence. Through this process, structure emerges from repetition, creating a sense of comfort and containment. In contrast, cutting and soldering glass is unpredictable and temperamental, requiring a different kind of attention and surrender.
Light continually transforms the glass, shifting the relationship between darkness and illumination throughout the day. This interplay becomes a meditation on duality—the fragile and the strong, the soft and the hard, the known and the uncertain, darkness and light.
Ultimately, Cathedral is an invitation to seek beauty and comfort within uncertainty, and to remain open to the possibility of magic and light even in the darkest of places.
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