Artist’s Statement

On Duty

I am built from all The Making come before me. And my work, of course, is Duty: to my ancestors by blood and my ancestors in making, be they teachers of the teachers of the teachers that taught me or be they all the nameless mothers of the mothers of the brothers that had forged the nails and spun the threads and baked the bread that fed them as they laid the railroad ties that are the veins that roll against the hills within my blessed homelands of the Midwest, its open skies against Missouri and ‘gainst Kansas where I grew into a woman with feet soaked in all their rivers and their cricks. It is my duty, just as well, to endure. Through my Making, I am justified—I can understand the ways that I’ve become me and from all of what I’ve grown—I am built on all the blood and soil and sweat and aching souls of those before. They were makers and survivors—and so am I.