I started out looking for a painting to work on, and somewhere in the process I was led to a beautifully petite pair of antlers, affixed to a shaved block of wood. Sometimes our projects call us, and that’s how it started between the antlers and myself, a whisper in a thrift shop: “it’s me.”
Someone, somewhere, in an unknown time away wanted to honor these in the way they were able to; the fact that the block was painted told me as much. Using natural materials and fibers, some of which were hand dyed by myself using botanicals, and recycled fabric scraps from previous projects, I wove a folk-like story of nature's adornment through collaboration of materials onto the antlers, bringing a new identity for the antlers into existence.
To complete the story, and my contributions, I carved a linoleum block featuring a coneflower, or more commonly known, echinacea. While commonly used to treat illness and purify the immune system, it also widely appears in folklore and spellwork. I read that echinacea can energetically help one to release outdated personal stories, emotions, and attachments, helping us awaken to our true selves - and in many ways, collaboration can unlock the same growth cycles in us if we let it.