Digital Collage • 18 x 24 in • Summer 2024 in-progress
In 2020, I graduated with my MFA, and the world fell apart. With academic jobs placed in a freeze and my source of income depleted, I went to the service industry to work in kitchens again. Within two months of returning home, I lost one of the most important people to me to the rip current of mental health. The heart of this project is an homage, a personal yet universal tribute to the mental health decline and loss of life among service workers, a side of the pandemic that has been largely overlooked and forgotten.
I create these digital collages to blend images taken at my kitchen jobs, my hometown of Indianapolis, and a trip back to North Carolina (where I lived before C0VID-19). I was thrown into grief, physical pain from my job, and the world changing at a scale I never imagined I’d live through. During this time, I found it almost impossible to create. Through the source images used in these collages, my subconscious kept creating without knowing how or if a project would unfold. To anyone else struggling with their mental health and creativity, be kind to yourself and don’t overlook what you do naturally as art.