“thistlelover” was on display at the Wiregrass Museum of Art in 2023 as part of Kudzu Soliloquy, curated by Holly Meyers.
The installation (thistlelover) is conceptually about unshared stories. Southern gothic stories tell tales of outsiders, but there are always further fringes and things that get overlooked. I thought of how I don’t have a ton of queer elders who are Southern artists, herbalists, or naturists. I thought of what it might look like if you stumbled upon the studio or closet or potting shed or altar that someone like that might have worked in–what someone with that identity and passion would have chosen to show, chosen to hide, chosen to collect, chosen to preserve, chosen to alter and catalog. I wanted to create this invented lineage of strong, powerful artists who live and love like me, and then to position myself within that lineage--to invent an archive with bits of myself placed within it.
thistlelover explores those ideas and tries to investigate what personal spaces mean. The piece doesn’t necessarily answer every question the viewer might have--there is a narrative that can be implied, but it is really up to the viewer to connect these dots in a constellation that feels right for them. What does it look like to be invited into someone's most intimate quarters, into the place where they become themself? I want to evoke a feeling almost of voyeurism, of discovering something after it has been carefully, meticulously, deeply loved, and then abandoned, which I think is a phenomenon visible across the South.
The installation itself isn’t that different from a quilt, and uses a similar patchwork method for storytelling. The materials used vary from the first polaroid I ever took to dyeplants preserved from last year’s dye garden.