My current collection of artworks, entitled What I Bring, is as much an exploration of home as it is a product of the nomadic lifestyle I lead. I am a professional live in your house and care for your pet, boat or emu sitter and over the past two years my boyfriend and I have moved on average once a month to befriend twenty-seven animals. Sometimes we only move a block, other times we cross the Bay Bridge. In November we moved ten times and each time I carefully reevaluated what I had brought with me. Was the blender essential? 

As a frequent traveler one of my most cherished possessions has always been luggage, not for the style or the label but for what it can hold. Each unpacked article feels much like a discovery, a rebirth of an item, a new possibility. As a transient artist mobility is a regular consideration in both the form and scale of my works and I enjoy playing with the idea of unexpected containers or vehicles for my work. 

I have often been accused of wandering and now it seems it is a prerequisite for my lifestyle. With this heightened awareness of the certainty of change, of fluctuating physical spaces, I am constantly being challenged to reevaluate how I define home and what I must carry with me. 

I find myself opting to carry metal roller skates and a stack of my mother’s handmade soaps in lieu of ample clothing. I do not skate but I have never seen orange wheels quite like these and the soap’s scent reminds me of another home. In most houses I sleep on the bedside farthest from the door, I conceal the bedroom mirrors with a sheet to discourage nightmares and search for the spot where I will create my assemblages. I introduce myself to the current residents, the cats and dogs who are the only witnesses of our presence in the home. I am a house sitter but at the root of it I am an artist trying to make art and find a home within myself.