Are We Free to Go

Are We Free to Go explores the fundamental freedom to move, gather, learn, speak openly, and care for our own bodies—basic human actions that increasingly feel constrained as our country and world shift politically. These works ask how free we truly are. As a papermaker and printmaker, I see art as a force that changes perception, and I act as its messenger.

Each piece begins with handmade Abaca and Kozo paper. While forming the sheets, I embed carved linoleum and collagraph prints, threads, and fragments of past projects, creating a layered record of experience. Controlled burning marks time, hardship, and the fragility of our freedoms. Suspended on monofilament, the works reveal both front and back; their holes, edges, and irregularities cast shifting shadows that change with light and time of day.

Several years ago, drawings made by children in U.S.–Mexico border detention centers captured my attention. Their dense, crisscrossing lines—mapping confinement, fear, and daily restriction—have stayed with me and now permeate my work. When I cannot accept this reality, my hands trace, build, and dismantle these lines in metal and paper. They remain chaotic, unreadable, and unresolved, mirroring the children’s lived experience and our collective responsibility to witness it.

1. Are We Free to Go 1, Handmade Papers of Abaca and Kozo, collagraph print, threading and burning, embedded printed matter, 16 x 10 inches, 2025

2. Are We Free to Go 2, Handmade Papers of Abaca and Kozo, collagraph print, threading and burning, embedded printed matter, 16 x 10 inches, 2025

3. Are We Free to Go 3, Handmade Papers of Abaca and Kozo, collagraph print, threading and burning, embedded printed matter, 16 x 10 inches, 2025

4. Are We Free to Go 4, Handmade Papers of Abaca and Kozo, collagraph print, threading and burning, embedded printed matter, 16 x 10 inches, 2025

5. Are We Free to Go 5, Handmade Papers of Abaca and Kozo, collagraph print, threading and burning, embedded printed matter, 16 x 10 inches, 2025