By merging canonical portrait strategies with representations of traditional Jewish food, my work uses humor as a tool for levity, acceptance, and reflection. I make this work in acknowledgement of an American cultural moment mediated by pings and buzzes of smart gadgets, personal and endemic experiences with loss, and the grace of community perseverance.

I begin with writing: a process of revisiting memories of interpersonal moments, lyrics to a catchy song, meditations on lost loved ones. Sentences and phrases live in my head like melodies my mind sings when everything is quiet. Rhythmic and narrative, each written phrase manifests visually in familiar items I scatter throughout a composition, an amalgam of ephemera: record covers; bottles of wine; text messages on a phone screen; ceramic hamantaschen totems; an electrified yahrzeit memorial candle, thing-offerings for emotional bridging and comfort.

Embedded with tenderness, my visual language communicates pattern, isometry, and object, as shared “thing-offerings,” gestures of care, invitations to pause and remember.

Mills College Studio Art MFA ‘22

Connecticut College Art History ‘19