Mothaígh Thú Uaim: Feeling You From Me, utilizes nets and lace to abstract the memories and feelings of grief around losing my mom at age 19. During my grad school career, I’ve had the opportunity to visit Ireland and research Irish lace in County Kerry, where my ancestors originate. I’ve hiked through the mountains and learned Gaeilge by the ocean. In Irish Gaelic, there is no direct way to say, “I miss you” or “I miss ___”. Instead, the language prioritizes the act of feeling and the object of that missing over the primary subject. It highlights the distance between the person feeling the loss of another. 

My travels and time spent immersed in the Irish landscape and culture has influenced the color palette and materials of this exhibition. Memories reverberate in my mind of seeing the reddish brown bog bodies twisted in their current resting state and the preserved twill weaves dyed by years of submergence in the earth. In working with a primarily brown color palette, I have learned about the beauty of brown, what emotions different shades connote, and how the color always returns us to the earth. 

The ceramics and paper cast nets act as preservatives. Historically, one of the only records we have of textiles are the imprints they made on ceramics. Casting rope in porcelain and greenware slip and then burning out the textile through kiln-firing was my homage to that history. The pieces also contain negative space, which you’re able to see through the cracking of the ceramic, holding a memory of what it once was. The knotted nets suspended within looped nets and covered in flax and cotton rag pulp also serve as an act of suspending memories. Through using nets as my main structural form, I bring attention to the porousness of memory, asking the question: What images remain and which ones are left behind? 

Utilizing textiles to create an installation around the abstraction of grief and memory, I create a space showing the distance between an individual and the person, place, or thing that they are missing. How does time abstract the memories of a person long past? How many layers of grief are there covering the incident?