Rituals + Meaning

November 2021

Have you ever thought about where meaning comes from? The emotional & spiritual meaning we attach to certain things – places, people, bodies, colors, shapes, objects, you name it. As a former writer, I’m interested in the ideas behind meaning that ultimately create not just language, but our highly individual emotional vocabularies. This is what I’m exploring in the Rituals + Meaning Collection.

Throughout our lives, we learn to make unique meanings out of different types of information. The meanings we make are directly shaped by all of the previous experiences we’ve ever had – our joys, traumas, fears, the people who raised us, and the cultures we grew up within. There are whole lifetimes behind our individual processes of attaching meaning. While the general process of creating meaning is a universal one, the exact meanings we uncover are highly individual. This contradiction reveals to be the power in attempting to understand oneself and others.

For this collection, I created a symbolic language. Within each piece is a patterned arrangement of symbols and alternate markings that create tiny universes of meaning. Represented within the symbols are meanings I hope for all of humanity to find – themes like hope, protection, community, balance, and strength. My intention is for the viewer to consider the patterns within their own lives – the ones worth keeping and the ones that no longer serve – and to keep finding meaning in this wild universe we share.