Category: Ramblings

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Between Rain and Ripening

While life Stateside begins to slow for winter, here in St. Croix the pace is quickening. Fall and winter are our busy months, visitors arriving, holiday parties unfolding, fruits ripening faster than I can harvest them. The rainy season is in full swing; the orchids are blooming, and both the Java Plum and Coco Plum trees are heavy with fruit. Some of the mango trees, stubborn and generous, are still producing too.

I’ve started gathering mahogany seed pods for future art projects, each one a small promise of what’s to come. The seasonal residents will soon be back, which means restaurant reservations will become competitive sport. And yet, all I want to do is nest in the studio. I have nine works in progress waiting for my hands, plus a handful of new ideas elbowing their way to the front of the line.

I had hoped to spend this season reflecting on growth and gratitude, but truthfully, I’m feeling overwhelmed. There’s a certain kind of fullness that comes with this time of year, a lushness that’s both beautiful and demanding. The rain feeds everything at once: the fruit, the flowers, the ideas, the obligations.

Maybe that’s its own kind of gratitude, to be overflowing with possibilities, even when there aren’t enough hours in the day.

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I Make Meaning

I’ve come to understand that my work isn’t just about creating objects. It’s about memory, materiality, and spirit. Everything I make; wrapped, woven, knotted, scavenged, stitched, or adorned, is a form of testimony, offering, and witnessing. I don’t work in isolation. I work in collaboration with community, ancestors, with land and water, with discarded things, with stories people have tried to bury.

My relationship with spirit has never followed a straight line. I was raised Unitarian and only recently learned that my father served as a Deacon in the Episcopal Church. That discovery reframed things I didn’t know I was carrying. And earlier this year, when I traveled to Rome on pilgrimage with McCarty, I received a series of quiet but undeniable signs pulling me toward a deeper, more embodied practice of faith. Not about labels, but about ritual, remembrance, and devotion.

I don’t separate that calling from my art. My materials, marine debris, fibers, beads, plastics, hair, ephemera are more than tools. They are archives. They hold grief, joy, migration, violence, survival, and protection. The transformation isn’t about erasing what was, it’s about uncovering it and letting it speak in a new form.

My practice is also a form of resistance. I confront microaggressions and the everyday cuts of bias through the act of making. Knotting is meditation. Weaving is reclamation. Wrapping is healing. Vessel building is ancestral technology. What some see as trash, I treat as evidence and essence, of impact, erasure, resilience, and spirit.

I am a community builder as much as I am an artist. I don’t create in isolation, I create in relation. Through workshops, mentorship, storytelling, and gathering, I make space for others to root into their own narratives. My studio residency, Sky Garden STX isn’t just a place, it’s a sanctuary in motion, a land-based altar, a future site for remembrance and making.

In the studio, intuition and ritual live side by side. A shell can hold memory. A piece of rope can hold history. A found object can become a portal. I don’t see my evolving faith as a departure from anything I’ve been, only as another thread in the braid, intertwined with ancestral memory, folk wisdom, and the quiet instructions of the materials themselves.

If there’s a throughline in everything I do, it is this:

I remember forward.
I work with what others overlook.
I build from what has been broken.
I create portals where stories can live again.

I don’t just make work.
I make meaning.
And I make room, for what has been, what is becoming, and what is calling me next.

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Nesting Into Inspiration

This month has been a season of settling in, creating, and reconnecting with my practice. I’ve been nesting in my studio, opening long-forgotten boxes, sorting materials, and rediscovering treasures that feel like gifts waiting to be transformed. There’s something grounding about this process of organizing and making space; each thread, each object, reminds me of where I’ve been and what’s possible.

Hurricane season has brought its own rhythm. The rains return, streams carve their paths through the property, uncovering shards of pottery and even revealing waterfalls. We’ve been clearing walking paths to open up the waterfall that flows between our home and the residency property, a reminder of how nature constantly reshapes and uncovers what is hidden.

I’ve been cutting back invasive vines, and soon their fibers will find their way into my work. I’ve also been upcycling rope, fabric, and leftover yarn into the beginnings of new projects that are slowly, patiently coming together. When the power goes out and I’m forced to shelter in place, I take it as an invitation to slow down, to listen, and to let the work unfold at its own pace.

In this season, I’m learning again that inspiration isn’t something to chase. It emerges naturally, like streams after the rain, if I make space, clear the path, and let it flow.

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August Reflections: Rediscovering Time Capsules

August has been a month of introspection and growth. I’ve been returning to old techniques with fresh eyes, particularly 2D mixed media works on paper. For a recent birthday activation, I created a series of Masquerade Masks and found myself diving deep into my archive, sorting through old monoprints, tissue prints, handmade papers, magazine tears, postcards, early collages, and ephemera I had tucked away and forgotten.

In the process, I stumbled across a time capsule I set aside in 1995. Inside were treasures I hadn’t expected: rare photos of my father smiling, fragments of memory, and traces of ideas that still pulse through my work today. What once felt like discarded experiments now read as early whispers of themes that continue to guide me; ancestral spiritual practices, cosmic geometry, abstraction, African masks, adornment, and divine intervention.

Funny how time reshapes our perspective. Works that seemed incomplete years ago now feel like essential threads in my practice. The textures, patterns, and iconography I once set aside have returned, asking to be seen anew, insisting on their place in the conversation of my work.

I am still processing these rediscoveries, letting memory and material speak. I look forward to seeing how my hands guide me as these old forms weave themselves into the present moment.

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Illuminations and New Sight

Ever since I got my new reading glasses, I’ve been powering through my reading list with fresh eyes, literally and spiritually. This morning, I finished Illuminations by Mary Sharratt, a luminous novel about Saint Hildegard von Bingen, the 12th-century mystic, composer, healer, and visionary.

Magical vocal arrangements

Her story is so inspiring. Hildegard’s fierce devotion to divine creativity, her bold voice in a patriarchal world, and her communion with the natural world, echo so much of what I’ve been reaching for in my own practice. Her visions, wild, vivid, unapologetically feminine, remind me that there is sacred power in speaking what only you can see.

Hildegard’s legacy is a radiant thread in the life I’m building now, of ritual, plant medicine, and ancestral memory. I didn’t expect a book to shift my inner tempo, but Illuminations has done just that. More soon. There’s work to do in the garden.

Theda

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Recharging with Rest and ExplorationRecharging in July

This July, I’ve given myself permission to pause.

Not a retreat, exactly, but a recalibration. I’ve been recharging through rest and meditation, giving my mind, body and spirit space to breathe. In the swirl of projects, it’s easy to slip into autopilot. But this month, I chose to move with intention.

Each morning begins with stillness. I open the Hallow App and let the rhythm of guided prayer set the tone. Then, I walk to the studio and press play on my new morning playlist, an alchemical blend of sound designed to unlock flow. You can listen along here: Sky Garden STX Morning.

Between weaving, knotting, writing, and Zooms, I wander the garden paths, letting the plants teach me how growth happens, slowly, silently, often beneath the surface. Stillness is part of the process. Stillness, I’m learning is not absence. It’s part of becoming.

I’ve also been deep in the writings and music of Saint Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th-century mystic, composer, and healer. She saw divinity threaded through every leaf and sound, and believed that body, mind, and soul must be nurtured in harmony. Her word viriditas, the greening force of vitality, has been echoing in my studio practice. It reminds me that rest isn’t a break from creativity; it’s fertile ground for it. Rest is a sacred act of preparation.

This season of slowing down is giving rise to new ideas, new rituals, new ways of listening, to my materials, to my ancestors, to the whisper of the quiet voice within.

Rest is not retreat. It’s remembering.

Theda

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Midyear Musings: Art, Travel, and Staying Grounded

As we reach the midpoint of the year, I’ve been reflecting on how structure and intention are keeping me balanced amid the whirlwind of making, exhibiting, and traveling.

With Fiberart International 2025 now open in Pittsburgh—where Polyurethane Paradise: Rainforest Rhapsody is on view—and upcoming work headed to Interpretations 2025 in San Diego, the pace is full. Add to that ongoing work at Sky Garden STX, new writing projects, and my research around Provision Grounds, and it would be easy to feel stretched thin. But staying organized has made all the difference.

Lately, my planner has become a trusted studio assistant—helping me map out deadlines, break larger tasks into bite-sized actions, and track how far I’ve come. Whether prepping materials for an installation or scheduling studio time between trips, that clarity has helped me focus on one thing at a time without drowning in the big picture.

Travel also brings fresh energy into the studio. I often return from residencies or exhibitions with new ideas percolating—some that shift my original plans. I’ve learned to build in flexibility so I can respond when a piece wants to grow in an unexpected direction. Organization, for me, isn’t about control—it’s about creating space for creativity to breathe.

June reminded me that structure and discipline aren’t barriers; they’re a foundation. They allow me to honor the work, trust the process, and move forward with intention—even when life gets busy.

Here’s to the next half of the year—grounded, growing, and full of possibility.

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Instagram Hack—A Quick Note from Me

Friends,

If you received a strange message from my Instagram recently asking you to “vote for me on Spotify”—please know, that wasn’t me.

My account was hacked and out of my control for three days. I deeply apologize for any confusion or inconvenience this caused. And for the record: there’s no such thing as voting on Spotify. I would never send a mass message like that. If I had a real personal ask, I’d send a text or make an old-fashioned phone call—especially if we haven’t spoken in a while.

The experience was frustrating and unsettling, but thankfully I’ve regained access and tightened my security settings.

Please stay vigilant—if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.

With gratitude and a side of cyber caution,
Theda

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Quite Truth From The Margins

Since losing my father this past Thanksgiving, I’ve been leaning more heavily on the quiet practice that has grounded me for decades: journaling. I’ve kept journals and scrapbooks since childhood, but it was reading The Artist’s Way in the ’90s that made writing a consistent part of my creative and emotional life.

These pages are where I process—ideas, emotions, memories, the mundane, the magical. After I finish a piece of art, I often return to what I was writing during its making. In those margins, glimmers emerge. Little phrases. Sensory echoes. Emotions I couldn’t name at the time. And from there, poems begin to form.

Until now, I’ve kept most of these poems to myself. They’ve always felt deeply personal—like offerings only meant for the page. But recently, I was encouraged to begin sharing them, not just as a part of my grieving process, but as an extension of my artistic one.

So here goes.

I’ll be sharing select poems in the weeks ahead—tender words that trace the undercurrents of loss, memory, and healing. They live between fiber and feeling, just like my art.

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May: Inspiration, Community, and the Power of Collaboration

This month has been a whirlwind—charged with shared energy, creative breakthroughs, and meaningful connections. From my pilgrimage to Rome for Jubilee 2025 to the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in New York, NY Art Week exhibitions, and a return to my Jersey City showroom, one thing has become clear: collaboration and community are the lifeblood of my practice.

A standout moment was collaborating with artist and maker Nate Watson to build a custom loom lightbox for Entre Genres, a commission for Coty Infiniment Paris. I envisioned light passing through the weaving—refracted by suspended glass perfume bottles—capturing an ethereal, floating quality. Nate’s fabrication exceeded all expectations, and on a tight deadline. His generosity and expertise were instrumental in bringing this vision to life. I deconstructed marine line into soft fibers and wove airy, cloudlike gestures into the frame. The process opened new doors for me creatively—I’ve already started sketching a series of lightbox loom works inspired by this experience.

Morgan Mahape

Being immersed in art has been equally inspiring. Morgan Mahape’s beaded portrait at the 1-54 Fair stopped me in my tracks. The intricacy and emotion of the piece had me digging into my bead stash, suddenly seeing each bead like a pixel—tiny fragments forming a larger truth. That’s the power of great art: it reframes your perspective.

Spending time with other artists—talking technique, exchanging feedback, or simply standing in quiet reverence before a piece—has reminded me that art is never made in isolation. We are shaped by our conversations, our collaborators, and the environments we move through.

And yes, Rome was magical. Our trip began the same day Pope Francis passed away. We were among the first 100,000+ people to pay our respects during the wake at St. Peter’s Basilica. Standing before the frescoes, sculptures, catacombs, and icons I once only studied in books was surreal. Ancient cities built upon ruins of older cities—a living metaphor for layers of history and belief. I left with a deep desire to create a Threshold Altar installation, my own contemporary interpretation of iconography, spirituality, and faith. A slab of mahogany waits in my studio, alongside ritual items I’ve been quietly gathering. More soon on that.

This month, I’m filled with gratitude—for creative collaboration, for the artist community that surrounds me, and for the ongoing invitation to grow. Inspiration, after all, multiplies when shared.