Celebrating Rejection

Artists are rejected all the time.

We submit.
We wait.
We receive the no.

And I am learning to celebrate it.

During my CritLab fellowship, artist and curator Patricia Miranda offered a reframe that shifted me:

Celebrate the rejection.

Because rejection means you participated.
It means you answered the call.
It means you allowed yourself to be seen.

I recently submitted my Mummy Bears to a call centered on grief. That submission, not the outcome, was the milestone.

The Mummy Bears are for me and my dad. Every year on my birthday, March 11, he gave me a teddy bear and called me Bear. After dementia took his memory and he passed at Thanksgiving 2024, I began wrapping the bears. Preserving what I could.

Submitting that work was the next step in processing my grief.

The no does not change the ritual.
It does not change the love.

It simply confirms that I am participating.

As my birthday approaches, the day I feel his absence most, I am proud that I pressed submit. That I let my grief breathe outside the studio.

Rejection is not failure.

It is proof that I am still making.
Still risking tenderness.
Still moving forward.

And that is worth celebrating.

November 17, 2025October 28, 2025

Marking a Year of Remembering

This week marks one year since my father’s passing, November 22.
In that time, there have been so many milestones without him: his birthday, my birthday, holidays that felt quieter, thinner somehow. Each one has been a reminder of his absence, but also of the love and ritual that remain.

I’ve been working through the loss with my Mummy Bear series; a practice that began long before he died, when his memory started to fade. Every year since, I’ve created a new bear as an act of remembrance, a way to preserve our bond through my hands. What began as grief work has evolved into something larger, a visual language for love, memory, and transformation.

Grief doesn’t move in a straight line. It loops and unravels, it knots itself into the fabric of daily life. As I approach this anniversary, I find myself both heavy and grateful, for the years we had, for the ritual of making, for the quiet ways art holds what words cannot.

Each Mummy Bear is a conversation between what was and what remains. In the knotting, the wrapping, the layering, I find him, and, in some small way, find myself again.

October 13, 2025October 9, 2025

Mummy Bear: Ritual of Remembrance

Wrapped in Memory

My father called me Bear.
Each year on my birthday, a Teddy Bear arrived in his hands, a small ritual of love, a thread tying us together.

Then came the forgetting.
Dementia unraveled his memory, his personality, his knowing of me. The year the ritual broke, I wrapped one of his bears in cloth and yarn, sealing love inside layers of fabric. That first act of mummification became a meditation, an attempt to hold what was slipping away.

Since then, I have bound bear after bear, each one heavy with memory. Each one a vessel of grief and tenderness. Each one a tether back to him. By the time his eyes no longer found mine, six Mummy Bears stood as witnesses, silent guardians of our bond.

On Thanksgiving 2024, my father left this world. Yet the ritual endures.
Each year, I wrap another bear., to remember, to weave him back into my life.

My Mummy Bears are not toys.
They are offerings.
They are prayers.
They are the shape of love, surviving loss.

To wrap a bear, is to wrap my father back into being, to fold time, memory, and grief into a form I can hold.
He remains with me, thread by thread, bear by bear,
forever my father,
forever his Bear.

February 20, 2023February 11, 2023

Donate Old Teddy Bears

Do you a have much loved stuffed bear that you are willing to part with?

I am looking for used Teddy Bears of all sizes and condition. I need lots of bears for an upcoming installation.

I will be mummifying each bear with yarn and upcycled textiles preserving the integrity of its inner child.

I can accept drop offs with the doorman for Sky Garden Gallery at 150 Bay Street, Jersey City. Or I can arrange to pick up any donations on Fridays, evenings and on the weekend.

Please comment or DM me to let me know if you have any bears for me. Thank you!