My work consists of three series of portable soft sculpture objects that I photograph in different environments, as well as a series of embroideries and drawings of a group of young feral girls who live by the sea and constitute a self-sufficient society.

The first series of sculptures are the Soft Houses, which I created as a likeness of my childhood home in San Francisco. The second series, of House/Boats, are based on stories I have heard about boats being dragged on dry land during the Gold Rush in San Francisco and used as shops and houses. The Soft Girls are a self-portrait at age eight, and are the original inspiration behind my “Amazon” girls. The solitary girls or even pairings and small groups of girls, as well as the solitary houses in various settings, all relate to themes of displacement and disconnection, but also independence and adventure. Domesticity is associated with the home, but these houses are not a typical expression of domesticity in that they manage to be both well traveled (as they appear in many locations) and remote (as they are usually by themselves, sometimes in almost perilous locations). They parallel the girls’ own simultaneous isolation and autonomy.

My choice of materials and techniques to work with, particularly thread, cloth, and embroidery, was initially inspired by work made by women in the 1970s during the Feminist Art movement. My small, portable sculptures made of soft materials, embodying domestic themes, challenge the traditionally monolithic nature of sculpture in the western world.