This idea of collaboration has been on my mind quite a bit lately. A meeting of minds -- this external mingling of separate ideas, dancing and entangling together in conversation. It is a mode of existence that is increasingly important in our current cultural climate. How often do we encounter a level playing field, with ideas from multiple sources given equal footing. 

As humans who live in communities, collaboration is part of everyday life. How does my family reach a decision amidst varying voices? How do I work to meet my children where they are, and help them develop into their own identities? Whose needs are prioritized when, and how, and at what cost? Compromise happens constantly, and collaboration is the pathway to ensure that all members are valued. 

In my own work, my children and my husband often participate in the creation of the work, lending their bodies to the process of making work. As I am letting go of many ideas of control within my practice, I find myself wanting to find ways to level the playing field and include their ideas in the creative and decision-making process itself. Multiplicity adds beautiful dimensions to both life and art. 

I have been thinking about time in layers, with the past, present, and future overlaid in multiple strata. The interpretation of our present moment is colored by our experiences of the past, and both those layers forecast how we respond to our future. 

I am interested in how I can bend and reinterpret my conception of the past to alter my relationship to the present and build my own future. The camera freezes the frame, creating fixed moments or points in time. The extracted moments from various points of time are then layered, recontextualized, to tell new versions of the past and present, in the hope to project possibility in the future.  

Over the past decade, I have grown more and more convinced that there is no true black and white, that everything exists in the gray. This shift came around the time of becoming a mother, but I cannot quite articulate the connection between the two events. Maybe it is the expansion of my world and my heart, or my capacity for holding multiple vantage points at the same time, like the thoughts and needs of my children as they clash with mine. 

I now see a blending and layering of our world -- a swirl of complexity and nuance. My energy cannot be isolated from yours -- the way my body exists here has been influenced by those who stood here before. My posture, in turn, affects your energy in response to mine. And in this way, there are imaginary and invisible webs of connections running through all of us. 

My work has shifted similarly, becoming more fluid and less restricted. Instead of working in neat compartmentalized bodies of work, I now see everything as interconnected. This shift in mindset, and perhaps my age, has allowed me to trust my instincts more without the necessity of articulating every idea immediately. It has allowed a lot of freedom, and made my work much more complex.