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Thyroid prints 2023-24
Echoes of the Unseen
For an entire year, I’d been captivated by a series of monoprints, a medium that felt like a dance between the deliberate and the accidental. More specifically, I’d been intrigued by a certain shape, a small body or figure that I couldn't quite identify, that emerged from my process in dozens of prints. Each one I pulled seemed to whisper secrets from deep within, yet I remained oblivious to the underlying truth. The images that emerged were an echo of something instinctual—a butterfly-like shape that I called a “little monster,” both fluid and fragmentary.
The recurring motif in my work for the full year felt like a conversation with my body, reflecting something hidden just below the surface.
Then came that week in late June — News broke of the largest dolphin stranding in U.S. history, and my quaint coastal town was thrust into the spotlight. Though most were rescued, the marsh end at the end of the street became dotted with the bodies of these majestic creatures that did not survive. Seven dolphins washed ashore, their presence both surreal and haunting.
That same week I received my own fateful diagnosis at the hospital, and the words "thyroid disease" hung in the air like a dense fog. It felt as if my internal struggle had met the external world in a dark synchrony. The grief I felt for the dolphins echoed through my diagnosis; both were manifestations of neglect—of nature and self. In the days that followed, I tried to recover and when well enough, I walked around the island at the end of the street passing their bodies in the grasses and on the sand.
I ventured out each day, eventually documenting the dolphin’s decay, my heart heavy with grief for the lives lost and the aquatic beauty fading before my eyes. Just as I was wrestling with my own physical decline, here lay evidence of a larger ecological tragedy.
My prints from the past year took on new meaning, as I began to realize the shape that was emerging was actually the shape of a thyroid. Somehow an intuitive message had been sent, and finally received. I began intertwining the shapes of my thyroid-induced anxieties with the decaying forms of the dolphins. The art became a visceral exploration of loss and illness, bound together in a cycle of transformation.
I Through this act of creation, I began to process the intertwining narratives of my own illness and the environmental catastrophe that unfolded before me. These pieces became a testament to resilience—a reminder that even in decay, there was beauty and transformation, to be found.
For an entire year, I’d been captivated by a series of monoprints, a medium that felt like a dance between the deliberate and the accidental. More specifically, I’d been intrigued by a certain shape, a small body or figure that I couldn't quite identify, that emerged from my process in dozens of prints. Each one I pulled seemed to whisper secrets from deep within, yet I remained oblivious to the underlying truth. The images that emerged were an echo of something instinctual—a butterfly-like shape that I called a “little monster,” both fluid and fragmentary.
The recurring motif in my work for the full year felt like a conversation with my body, reflecting something hidden just below the surface.
Then came that week in late June — News broke of the largest dolphin stranding in U.S. history, and my quaint coastal town was thrust into the spotlight. Though most were rescued, the marsh end at the end of the street became dotted with the bodies of these majestic creatures that did not survive. Seven dolphins washed ashore, their presence both surreal and haunting.
That same week I received my own fateful diagnosis at the hospital, and the words "thyroid disease" hung in the air like a dense fog. It felt as if my internal struggle had met the external world in a dark synchrony. The grief I felt for the dolphins echoed through my diagnosis; both were manifestations of neglect—of nature and self. In the days that followed, I tried to recover and when well enough, I walked around the island at the end of the street passing their bodies in the grasses and on the sand.
I ventured out each day, eventually documenting the dolphin’s decay, my heart heavy with grief for the lives lost and the aquatic beauty fading before my eyes. Just as I was wrestling with my own physical decline, here lay evidence of a larger ecological tragedy.
My prints from the past year took on new meaning, as I began to realize the shape that was emerging was actually the shape of a thyroid. Somehow an intuitive message had been sent, and finally received. I began intertwining the shapes of my thyroid-induced anxieties with the decaying forms of the dolphins. The art became a visceral exploration of loss and illness, bound together in a cycle of transformation.
I Through this act of creation, I began to process the intertwining narratives of my own illness and the environmental catastrophe that unfolded before me. These pieces became a testament to resilience—a reminder that even in decay, there was beauty and transformation, to be found.
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Dolphin Combines, 2024
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