Installation shown at Maplewood Arts & Culture 1978 Gallery Aug 15 – Sept 7 2025

Statement from the beginning of this installation:

“Reflecting Refuge” is the culmination of ideas that first took shape several years ago, when I began learning more deeply about the plight of refugees in our global community. It began in 2015 when the civil war in Syria began to seep into my small media bubble. At the time, as a Mom of two young children, the horrors of the refugee families was heart wrenching. I began painting gouaches of the refugees and how the media portrayed them.

Fast forward to today: the media avalanche has only intensified, and the number of displaced people has grown exponentially. Those early works from ten years ago could still hang on these walls as if they were taken from the news just hours ago.

My work has always been about pulling issues from the shadows, issues that many would rather we not extend our attention to. With this project, my hope is to create a piece that can only come to life through the energy and input of the community. By inviting participants to contribute pieces to be sewn into the work, we create a collective act of solidarity and love: a shelter woven over a fragile reflective tent, fully aware that the tent exists both directly and indirectly because of all of us.

We are the tent. We are the protection, the cause and the vulnerability it symbolizes.

My hope is that, together, we build a “hug” suspended over the tent ,offering shelter to all who walk beneath it. The paper, materials and sewing all acting as metaphors for mending what is broken. We will create, together, a refuge from chaos and hate, and an awakening to the power of one voice joining many, forming a collective rally cry for our most basic love for humanity and for each other.