I just finished a week sharing my art and my process with the children at Patchwork Central, where most of the time the children see me as the Co-Director and camera lady.

It was fun to share my sculpture with them, and it was very fun to see the art that they created. It was also great to work again with my friend and fellow artist Jane Case Vickers. I started my career in community art almost 18 years ago by teaching art as Jane’s assistant in Patchwork’s Arts & Smarts Children’s Program.

I was very glad to get to teach with Jane again–I think she’s a great artist and a great teacher. We’ve always been attracted to similar materials and have similar artistic inspirations. We’ve done several projects and exhibits together.

One of these collaborative projects was called “Earthen Vessels”. We each created a series of female figures that explored the human form as a container for emotions and experiences. Each figure expressed an individual emotion or memory using  found fabrics and found objects that we felt were symbolic of the theme.

The images above show my work paired with Jane’s. The first shows Jane’s depiction of Guilt (titled “Guilt: She’s Got a Belly Full of Walnuts”) and my depiction of Love. The second shows my depiction of Loss and Jane’s depiction of Healing. They range from 64″ tall to 40″ tall.

When we took these photos, we intentionally paired a more positive emotion with a more negative one to highlight the interaction between the two.