These past two years of pandemic—with its isolation and changeability—prompted me to start the process of stripping my life down to its essentials. Household items that once had brought comfort began to feel like burdens, with their need for constant upkeep. As I decluttered, I considered the most ethical way to dispose of each item, so that I would put as little into the waste stream as possible. Most items were easy: friends, thrift shops, used-book stores, and the Art Resource Center all got loads of "stuff." But other, more sentimental things weren't appropriate for those outlets.

Every work in this Salvage exhibition began its life as something else. A work from my last show had been damaged so I cut it in two and gave it visible repairs to help me process the end of an important relationship. From piles of scraps, I designed new pod-like forms and patched other scraps together to make material for pitchers. I used a 50-year old quilt top that had been made from my family's clothes to create material for new vessels and an abstract wall quilt.

Since the concept of Salvage encompasses rescue, transformation and new purpose, I shaped some of those sentimental items into rounded forms and covered them with scrap yarn to obscure or to comment on their original identity. With a final layer of embroidery, their transformation feels complete, and those items that used weigh me down now make me smile.

Each of these transformed objects in Salvage helped me think about how to move forward from this extraordinary time of isolation and uncertainty. I hope they can inspire you too, as we all emerge from our cocoons to consider how the world has changed around us and the how we react to those changes.