This is the beginning of a NEW ERA. This piece was the last piece I was able to produce and it was for the Fiber 2020 Exhibition at the Silvermine Gallery, and I did in fact name it “New Era”. People in my family always make comments about my intuition, about the way I can predict things. Funny how I came up with this title before all our lives changed. “New Era” was deliver a week before the lockdown in the United States due to COVID-19 (aka coronavirus). Little did I know that indeed we were entering a new era, a new way of doing things, a new perspective of life and death, a new beginning for a new “normal”. This was also the last piece of felt I was able to produce in my studio. Since then, I haven’t been able to felt. My studio was also shut down. My life was turned upside down in just three months, and I even feel I am not even the same person I was back then. My old me stayed back, in the old era. My creativity is not the same as it was three months ago. That one also stayed in the old era. It’s been very painful not being able to get it back, but as I embrace this new era and try to learn how to live under all these new rules, guidelines, fear and uncertainty, I am ready to discover how my creative process will evolve, how I will see things differently, how I will appreciate life, friends, family, food (even toilet paper), hugs, kisses, love, peace, health, kindness. Let’s all make the best we can in this NEW ERA. Stay Safe and Be Kind.

“A woman is like a tea bag - you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water” - Eleanor Roosevelt

Drinking tea has played a very important role in the lives of many women across the world throughout the ages. Women like Mary Tuke, one of the first tea merchants to build a chain of tea shops, Oura Kei, who was pivotal in creating the Japanese tea export market, Catherine Cranston, who built a renowned chain of tea rooms in Glasgow, Elizabeth Petrovna, Penelope Barker, Alva Belmont and others, used ‘tea gatherings’ to mobilize support for women’s rights. They obtained loans to start small enterprises, owned property and frequented establishments without the companionship of a man. The Woman Suffrage Movement also started with a tea party. On July 9th, 1848, four women were invited to Elizabeth Cady Staton’s house for tea. What started as a simple tea gathering, grew into a transformational movement that would improve women’s lives forever. These women envisioned an equality that would break the discrimination against women, and they did it all with cups of tea in their hands. So, raise your cup of tea and salute those brave women!

I learned to create from my mother, who grew up in a poor, rural village, and who had no choice but to make her own clothes and other textiles in the 1940s and 50s. A passion for creating and the importance of self-sufficiency was instilled in me at an early age, though my artistic passion only came alive when, as an adult, I discovered the amazing qualities of wool and the wonderful art of felting. Coincidentally, my father also tended to his family’s sheep flocks while he was in grade school. Unfortunately, he had to leave school at the age of eight to tend to the flocks full time, so it only seems fitting that I continue with a similar connection to sheep and the fibers they produce. Most of my felting career has been dedicated to creating nuno felted garments. Although I am devoted to felt, I have also been intrigued by other fibers and fabrics. I have been including other materials such as paper into my work because, through my own experimentation, I learned I was able to make a very durable material by felting mulberry paper into the wool. Paper and wool, the windows to my soul.

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - and sings the tunes without words - and never stops at all” - Emily Dickinson

Worry, loss, sadness, injustice, desperation, tears, incredulity, uncertainty and pain can sap us of our will to carry on. A golden ray of hope keeps us going, striving, moving, laughing, breathing, loving and surviving. It binds us to each other and roots us to the ground. It is the current that jolts through our hearts and brightens are eyes. Hope nourishes us and guides us from darkness towards peace, justice, and love. The main color of this piece is white because it symbolizes protection and encouragement, it offers a sense of peace and calm and it helps alleviate emotional upsets. The red stitches symbolize good luck, joy, prosperity, celebration, happiness, and a long life.

We are three siblings in my family. And the three of us couldn’t be more different from each other. The expression “peas in a pod” doesn’t really work for us. The oldest one always trying to be right, to be smart, to be correct, to always do the right thing. Basically, the role model for the youngest ones. The middle one, always trying to find the right place, unending limbo. Competing with the oldest one and competing with the youngest one. But I see the middle one as having the biggest heart, the most sensitive, the one always full of energy, with a smile on her face and always laughing. And then the youngest. That’s me. The youngest, expected to follow not lead, listen not speak, say yes not no, obey not fight, always blamed when the guilty one doesn’t speak up. And, the worst of being the youngest? You always pay the price for your sibling’s previous mistakes, as the one who's most restricted, a result of the parents fear of making the same mistakes a third time. But if I had the chance to start over, I’d chose my two siblings again, without hesitation. 

I interviewed Vicky in November 2018. Before I met Vicky I had only learned from news reports how opioid addiction was affecting the country, but learning about Vicky's personal experience really opened my eyes to the urgency required to solve this problem. According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, 47,600 opioid overdose deaths occurred in the United States in 2017. But despite these numbers, doctors throughout the country continued to prescribe common drugs such as oxycodone, fentanyl, methadone, codeine and morphine to treat common sports injuries in young people. All the information was there and still little was being done. I personally didn’t know the scope of this problem because I hadn’t yet known anybody dealing with this crisis, but when I met Vicky and learned of her experience with opioids, it became clear that this addiction affects both the individual suffering the ravages of addiction and the fabric of communities overall. Opioid addiction is a corrosive epidemic that leaves so many lives marked and scarred, summarized by Vicky in one sentence: “it could happen to anyone, so no one is immune to it.” 

For Vicky, everything stared at the age of 19, when she injured her knee and her doctor just gave her pain medications after her surgery, the prescription for which continued for six additional months. Yet the only guidance she ever received was a brief warning that these pills could be addictive, and that she should be careful. After taking the pills for six months, the doctor cut off her prescription, and that was when the problem began. The opioids had already changed the chemistry of her brain and led to a drug tolerance. There was already a dependence, and she needed to increase the dose to achieve the same effect. Yet without additional prescriptions the only solution for her was to go to the streets to buy drugs illegally.

Vicky’s addiction lasted approximately four years. During that time, she lost too many important things to her: her son was taken away, she lost her job, she had no home, she lost many of her friends, and she lost herself. She was very afraid to come forward due to the stigma associated with addiction. But she came forward and then found the support she needed the most - her family - and together they moved forward on her path to recovery. She was in treatment for nine months, and gained a lot back after her recovery. Another powerful quote from Vicky during our interview that demonstrates her resilience and helped guide the concept for this installation: “In addiction I lost everything, and in recovery I gained it all back, and more." 

What is the purpose of borders? Are they essential for creating identity, values, and ideals? Are they the physical manifestations of tribal prejudice? One of the founders of the European Union once said that, “borders are the scars of history.”

On April 26, 2018 an officer in the Department of Health and Human Services testified on the subject of unaccompanied minors crossing the border from Mexico into the United States, saying that the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) "was unable to determine with certainty the whereabouts of 1,475 children.” With this piece I try to show how those "border scars" will always remain in our memories, playing a part in the lives of future generations as history unfolds.

There are 1,475 stitches, one for each child, designed to honor those who have suffered through such hardship, and to serve as a reminder that this event will indeed create deep, lasting scars on those children and their families.

Every 9 to 15 seconds a woman is physically assaulted or killed. I come from a country where domestic violence is almost part of our day to day life, and it’s time to be seen as a social disease, an epidemic. It happened my family, I witnessed it, and it was something considered normal, part of the culture, something that happens inside doors, something you don’t talk about, something that everybody knows but nothing is done. Only recently the Spanish justice system admitted is failing victims of domestic violence. It’s time that society recognizes that this is social problem and that society need to accept it. We think that victims of domestic violence have visible scars or marks, but actually 80% of victims do not present any physical scar. And if we don’t see those scars, then the problem is not real. If you don’t see their pain, you don’t feel their pain. But those silent scars will always be with them, and they will carry them forever. 

"Nevertheless, she persisted" is an expression adopted by the feminist movement after the United States Senate voted to silence Senator Elizabeth Warren's objections to confirmation of Senator Jeff Sessions as U.S. Attorney General in 2017.Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell uttered this sentence during comments following the vote in an effort to defend the Senate's actions and silence opposition from Warren. I used six actual signs used during the Women’s March in cities like New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Washington, DC. I embroidered these signs into six antique linens, as a way of representing the role of women during colonial times, and how women have fought for their rights in one form or another since then. We haven’t given up, our mothers and grandmothers have been persisting, and because of their efforts, we have been able to make great changes. “Nevertheless, She Persisted”is an homage to  every woman who has relied on her tenacity and courage to accomplish whatever she set out to achieve.

February 10th, 2018. I had just filled the french coffee press when I received a call 4,000 miles away. A lot of words, crying, sobbing, but all I could hear: “Your brother is dead”. And many questions overcame my mind. What? How? Why? Why? Why? He was my oldest sibling. Eleven years older than me. He, the one who took the place of my father, whose work kept him away from home for weeks at a time. He, the one who snuggled with me in bed when thunder and lightning was too much to handle. He, the one who comforted me with his tender stories and vivid imagination. Those questions that overcame me that winter morning will never be answered, but the dialogue continues here, the next chapter. With this nuno felted and joomchi piece, I say the many things I wished I had told him through the years, the beginning of a slow and steady healing, a healing that will last forever. Hasta Siempre!

What will it take? How many more lives? It seems like no amount of killing is enough for Congress to take action on guns.  It seems that each mass shooting in America makes us more desensitized to the horror. This piece aims to keep us sensitive to these ongoing tragedies. How many more lives do we need to lose so our politicians are finally forced to do something — anything —  to try to end the bloodshed? What is enough? Killing 20 six and seven year-olds in an elementary school is not enough. Over 500 injured and almost 60 killed at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas, and 50 killed at a night club in Orlando is also not enough. When is enough enough?

Through my work I hope to raise awareness of the problems of climate change, as well as the solutions we can implement to help reduce the effects and adapt to new environmental realities. This piece specifically focuses on water shortage and conservation — shortage in the depiction of drought the work represents visually, and conservation in my approach to altering my usual production method to use less water. Increasing drought in certain parts of the globe is directly traced to climate change, and so it is with this hand-felted piece (and others like it) that I'm trying to represent the effects that are currently taking place because of increasing water shortages in some regions of the world. Because the use of water is essential and necessary for making felt, I drastically reduced the amount of water I normally use, keeping in mind that so many areas are suffering because of the lack of rain and water. This project made me realize that I can make big changes in my production process to help conserve water and be part of the solution.

This piece represents nostalgia for a time of healthy civic engagement. The blue calls to our sense of vigilance, perseverance and justice, though it is fragmenting. The red symbolizes our hardiness and value, though now with a burned hole through it. The white is for purity and innocence, with little stitches suggesting a path with many steps that can lead to a healthier democracy, if we have the patience and care to bind all citizens more tightly together again.

Still today, 2018, these are some of the major issues challenging women in the USA: Poverty, hunger, homelessness, the continuing gender wage gap, domestic violence, reproductive rights, inadequate maternal and infant health care, the absence of laws mandating paid sick and parental leave, reasonable accommodations for pregnant women, the lack of affordable and competent child care, the treatment of women in prison, human trafficking/sex slavery, under-representation of women in political life, discrimination in academia, under-representation in the justice system and lack of opportunity for women in high-tech fields. This piece represents all the scars we have been carrying, we as women, from the moment we are born, and how we have been “stitching” them with our persistence, diligence, passion, strength, care and emotional intelligence, while drawing strength from our deepest scars, some which never fully close.

“She’s been through hell and came out, an angel. You didn’t break her, darling. You don’t own that kind of power” — unknown

This piece was made as a meditation practice to understand the pain of domestic violence. Spain, my country of origin, is still struggling to tackle this issue, and is a problem that has touched my family personally. This piece offers comfort to those who have been victimized.

17,700,000 women have reported a sexual assault since 1998. This movement spread as a two-word hashtag in October 2017 to denounce sexual assault and harassment, in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations against numerous powerful men. Since then the movement has encouraged many women to openly talk about experiences that demonstrate the widespread nature of misogynistic behavior. With this piece I also say #metoo. It is created with pieces of second-hand clothing from thrift stores.

“For too long, survivors of sexual assault and harassment have been in the shadows. We have been afraid to speak up, to say “Me Too” and seek accountability. For many, the consequences of doing so have been devastating” — Tarana Burke
 

On May of 2017 I had the great opportunity to spend two weeks at Mass MoCA for a residency. The work I created was inspired by the cocoon of the Cricula Trifenestrata Silk Moth, a wild silk moth from Indonesia. Cricula caterpillars spin these golden yellow cocoons with uneven small holes that resemble no other silk cocoons. The golden color across the room is inspired by the honey- to gold-toned fibers of the cocoons with a most beautiful metallic sheen. Such a unique surface texture… 

The Cricula cocoons are rare and difficult to find, so for my felting I mostly use silk from the Bombyx Mori silk moth cocoon, a much more common silk but also fascinating. This is the white cocoon you will see inside some of the paper structures. The Bombyx cocoon is made of a thread of raw silk from 300 to about 900 m (1,000 to 3,000 ft) long. The fibers are very fine and lustrous, about 10 μm (0.0004 in) in diameter. About 2,000 to 3,000 cocoons are required to make a pound of silk (0.4 kg). Worldwide, at least 70 million pounds of raw silk are produced each year, requiring nearly 10 billion cocoons. My paper cocoons attempt to take the form of these two beautiful and natural creations. They were made with hundreds of silk threads dipped in paper pulp, all of them interlocked forming a web. 

The very fine structure of the holes in the Cricula cocoons inspired me to create the prints on the wall. All of them are mono prints on BFK paper, and for all I used silk thread and silk fabric to create the image. To print them I was fortunate to be able to use an old etching press at Maker’s Mill. 

The four canvasses on the wall represent my main and more comfortable medium: wet-felting. The lines on all of them represent the long journey all of the Bombyx and Cricula worms have to endure to create these cocoons.

Through my work I hope to raise awareness of the problems of climate change, as well as the solutions we can implement to help reduce the effects and adapt to new environmental realities. This piece specifically focuses on water shortage and conservation — shortage in the depiction of drought the work represents visually, and conservation in my approach to altering my usual production method to use less water. Increasing drought in certain parts of the globe is directly traced to climate change, and so it is with this hand-felted piece (and others like it) that I'm trying to represent the effects that are currently taking place because of increasing water shortages in some regions of the world. Because the use of water is essential and necessary for making felt, I drastically reduced the amount of water I normally use, keeping in mind that so many areas are suffering because of the lack of rain and water. This project made me realize that I can make big changes in my production process to help conserve water and be part of the solution.

“Bleached Coral” was created as part of the “Pentaculum” artist residency in Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Tennessee (USA). Pentaculum is only by invitation, and it's an incredible event designed to provide artists with unfettered time and space to work alongside other artists. 

Back in 2014 our family took a trip to Saint John Island (US Virgin Islands). One day we went snorkeling and I noticed all the coral was white. This image came back to me in Arrowmont, and I decided to do more research on the topic. As the planet warms, higher water temperatures result in coral bleaching. When water is too warm, corals expel the algae living in their tissues causing the coral to turn completely white, however, when coral bleaches it doesn’t necessarily die. Corals can survive a bleaching event, but they are under more stress and are subject to mortality.

Both pieces were done with short fiber merino batt. After looking at the final result, it still didn’t look much like coral to me. I knew that it needed more texture, but the piece was already done, so I couldn’t add much to it and continue felting. The resident working across from me was using one of the school sewing machines, and she had found it great to use. That automatically gave me the idea of adding free motion embroidery to the piece. As soon as I worked on the first corner, I realized that it resembled those corals I saw while snorkeling. The piece is only 12” x 15” (30 cm x 38 cm), but the free motion embroidery took more than 6 hours to complete. I was exhausted after the completion and my eyes felt extremely tired and dry, but that color white was so beautiful, and the texture was exactly what I wanted to achieve. 

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - and sings the tunes without words - and never stops at all” - Emily Dickinson

Worry, loss, sadness, injustice, desperation, tears, incredulity, uncertainty and pain can sap us of our will to carry on. A golden ray of HOPE keeps us going, striving, moving, laughing, breathing, loving and surviving. It binds us to each other and roots us to the ground. It is the current that jolts through our hearts and brightens are eyes. HOPE nourishes us and guides us from darkness towards peace, justice, and love. This piece visualizes a golden ray of HOPE that can help us all carry on. 

100% merino wool, wet felted, hand-carved

100% merino wool, 100% silk, wet felted, hand-dyed

Through my work I hope to raise awareness of the problems of climate change, as well as the solutions we can implement to help reduce the effects and adapt to new environmental realities.

"Mending My Way Through” was inspired by many of the Boro pieces I keep coming across.  Born is a class of Japanese textiles that have been mended or patched together, usually sewn from 19th and early 20th century rags and patches of indigo-dyed cotton.The term is derived from Japanese boroboro, meaning something tattered or repaired. In most cases, the beautiful arrangement of patches and mending stitches grew out of necessity, as opposed to aesthetics. Cotton was scarce in Japan until well into the 20th century, so once clothing was made, it would have to be maintained for as long as possible by patching broken or worn out parts with small pieces of scrap fabric, using sashiko stitching. Looking at Boro pieces can inspire an appreciation of pragmatism over aesthetics, and time spent over money. It serves as a reminder that our current consumerist lifestyle is unsustainable, and that we can look to the past for wisdom on how to conserve our resources and minimize waste. "Mending My Way Through" was a learning experience for me. It created an appreciation of even the smallest scraps of textile laying around my studio. Let’s be grateful and appreciative of the value of what we have and how we can use it again and again. 

e·clipse: an obscuring of the light from one celestial body by the passage of between it and the observer or between it and its source of illumination.

These three pieces have been wet felted with merino wool and textured with thousands of stitches using rust-dyed cotton and linen thread. As a natural dyer, the golden color of rust has always meant to me much more than any other color in the spectrum. It wasn't an easy color to achieve until I started to experiment with a few pieces of rusted metal that I found on the street. This then lead me to a creative journey on different medium such as silk, wool, cotton, and later on paper. The stitches allowed to create that eclipse effect on the felt.

Rust gradually corrodes metal objects, leaving a permanent, unforgettable print.

These six pieces have been wet felted with merino wool, and textured with thousands of stitches using rust-dyed cotton and linen thread. As a natural dyer, the golden color of rust has always meant to me much more than any other color in the spectrum.

It wasn't an easy color to achieve until I started to experiment with a few pieces of rusted metal that I found on the street. This then led me to a creative journey in different mediums like silk, wool, cotton, and paper.

100% merino wool, wet felted, hand-stitched, rust dyed

Nuno felted

100% merino wool, 100% silk fabric

Rust-dyed