The Opposite Of Fear Is Joy acts to articulate the process of moving past bodily fear towards a joyful groundedness - wrestling with a desire to both identify and not identify with the physical body and mind. Organ and bodily centered imagery are informed and sourced from the artist's experience with an intestinal disease. The fear that comes with existing in a body that is ill is contrasted with a fascination for corporeality. These works act as a yearning (and attempt) to remember our connection with the equally robust and fragile qualities of nature, to merge into the microscopic and escape the complications of our skin suits. To move away from the mechanical mind into the somatic body. To find joy within the physical sensations to witness and confront the fleeting nature of being alive. 

In the works, tension is created between “natural” and “artificial,” earth and technology, body and mind, ego and spirit. Both automated and of earth, faulty and faultless. Fleshy yarn, lace, and red and pink tones are used to both mirror bodily forms and serve as protective armor. Heavy digital manipulation allows a space for an imagined dissolution where pixels of the cyberspace parallel matter in the body.  Blackberries and their thorns grow rapidly and invasively in nature, difficult to control - a motif affectionately inspired by the artist's childhood landscape, causing both grief and abundance for her rancher family. The brambles were sourced from the artist's family home in Northern California.They represent the part of the body that is beyond control, a susceptibility to biology. Our inner thorn, which guides us to the berry.