Artist Statement, CV
My art practice is born of a love-of-the-land, natural spaces and the life that inhabits them. The work seeks to bridge and connect the human-world with the natural-world. It is an effort to reconsider and reevaluate our relationship to the larger living world in times of increasing climate crisis. My research has spanned investigations into various human relationships to the natural-world, moving into ethnographic studies on communication and language, exploring modes of representation, reaching beyond symbolic language. With my work I seek to impress an understanding, in an increasingly alienated world, that we are not just single beings, we, too the earth, the ocean, the sky.
I apply this research within my studio practice combining craft-based manipulation of both traditional and nontraditional fine art materials. I draw from craft traditions deeply rooted in the history of the women in my family including sewing, quilting, embroidery, basket weaving, crochet, and plating. I combine these methods with customary practices of collage, assemblage, painting and sculpture. The work is hand-stitched, hand-painted, and drawn, embracing irregularity and whimsy, communicating touch, softness, my artist’s hand wrought over every surface.
EDUCATION
2021 MFA in Studio Art, University of California, Davis- Davis, CA
2018 BA in Studio Art / Minor in History California State University, Sacramento- Sacramento, CA (Cum Laude)
AWARDS
2023 Verge Center for the Arts, Regional Residency- Sacramento, CA
2022 Anonymous Was A Woman, Nomination
2021 Headlands Graduate Fellowship Award- One-year residency
2021 Fay Nelson Award, University of California, Davis
2020 Dean’s Summer Research Fellowship, University of California, Davis
2020 Mary Lou Osborn Award for dedication and creativity, University of California, Davis
2020 National Humanities Center, Fall Residency, (moved online due to Covid)
EXHIBITIONS AND PUBLICATIONS
2023 As yet untitled, Marrow Gallery, San Francisco, CA, Upcoming solo
2023 The Pyramid Show, Bass and Reiner, San Francisco, CA
2022 Lost Keys, Thacher Gallery, University of San Francisco, CA, Solo show
2022 Phantom Limb, Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, CA, Headlands Gradate Fellow show
2022 Tongues In Trees, Strata, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Solo show
2021 Two Moons In Sagittarius, Marrow Gallery, San Francisco
2021 Strata: A Prologue, Strata, Santa Fe, New Mexico
2021 Threaded, Coaxil, Los Angeles, CA
2021 Art and Humanities Graduate Exhibition, Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, UC Davis
2021 New American Paintings, No. 153, MFA Annual Issue,
2021 Actually Here, B. Sakata Garo and Be Cool Club, Sacramento CA
2020 Endnotes, Jay Jay Gallery, Sacramento CA
2020 Slice, Pence Gallery, Davis CA
2020 Love and Isolation, Art-Music-Lit-Space, (moved online due to Covid)
2018 I’m Funk and I’m Proud, Golden One Arena Public Screens, Sacramento
2018 Inside at the Outside, Recent Works by Mercy Hawkins, R.W. Witt Gallery, CSUS
2017 Pink Week: Small Art Exhibit, Art Space 1616, Sacramento, CA
2017 Hot Buttered Rum: Group Show, 1810 Gallery, Sacramento