He tossed a pebble into the stream and tiny ripples spread across the unbroken water. “The choices you make will create, as that pebble did, ripples across your life,” he said. I was seven and he was my Native American grandfather, the greatest influence in my life.

Over the past two years, I have traveled extensively throughout the American Southwest, visiting Native American lands and Anasazi ruins, camping at each visited place for up to a week to experience the landscape and open myself to the culture there that once thrived. Upon returning to the studio, I capture elements of these journeys. I see my work as a mapping of spiritual connection, where the marks that I make become a personal language developed from these experiences.

My lace beadwork weaves together my grandfather’s oral traditions and my grandmother’s lovingly handmaid lace. The beauty that my ancestors made was not about perfection. It was meant to honor both what came before and what may lie ahead.