I’m not going to bury the lead— I’m so dang excited to announce that I will be apart of the Chicago Artist Coalition’s 2026 residency cohort!!!

Chicago Artists Coalition (CAC) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting contemporary Chicago artists and curators at pivotal stages of their careers. Founded in 1974 by artists advocating for rights, resources, and visibility, CAC has played a lasting role in shaping Chicago’s cultural landscape while evolving to meet the needs of the city’s creative community. Today, CAC provides residency programs, exhibitions, professional development, and access to critical resources that help artists and curators sustain meaningful practices.

Within the two year Residency, the first year consists of building community, networking, professional development, and the creation of new works. The second year features a series of three person shows opening roughly every two months.

With how positive an experience the Hyde Park Center Program was, I’m so so excited to continue building new work alongside a cohort of like-minded peers. I will have an on-premise studio at the CAC’s gallery space and I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of new ideas come out of this space!

Hyde Park Center Program “Mutuality” Exhibition

Praxis DWL Residency

In February 2026, I attended my third DWL Residency at the Praxis Fiber Workshop. It’s one of two places nationally where weavers can get access to the TC2 Digital Jacquard loom outside of an institutional space. I love the two week residency format for Jacquard weaving, as it really lets me sink my teeth into what I’m working on and chase down ideas. I usually prep files for 3-6ms leading up to the residency, so I’ve got the option to weave what I brought or make new files based on what I’m learning as I go.

That said, it’s not for the faint of heart. Weaving is, at the best of times, a laborious task. Flying to another time zone, tying on 1320 warp threads, winding 30 yards onto the back beam, and then weaving standing at a loom slightly wider than your wingspan for two weeks is quite honestly exhausting. I wouldn’t trade my time there for anything.

I took files for three bodies of work and moved between them as I went along —

• The next phase of my Moons, thinking through the ideas of capture and escape in the context of the persecution of women/queer bodies in the US

• A series of works I’m thinking of a “contemporary coverlets” that engage in contemporary discourse with the historic pattern database I’m slowly building through my archive digging.

• Echo Weaving as adapted to the TC2, for the purpose of converting sound wave visualizations into weaving drafts via network drafting

The big theme that began to emerge through the weaving was one of play with clarity, obfuscation, interference, glitch, and the push/pull between background/foreground. It emerged in over and over again, whether it be through pattern interference, the dissolving of the image through digital manipulation, or a part of the collage work that goes into the creation of the weaving files. In this one (above), it comes from the matte texture of the rain drops on the “surface of the water” fighting with the metallic brightness of the moon that physically sits behind in the picture plane, but wants to come up above everything around it in our attention.

I’m still in the process of getting everything hemmed (21 completed pieces is no joke in terms of sewing!) so I can get the big documentation done.

Echo Weaving for the TC2

Everyone is asking how on earth I managed this. The shortest answer is Turn Drafting.

I’ll be presenting a seminar on the topic at the Praxis Digital Weaving Conference this summer if you want the whole in-depth process!! Here’s a snippet of what it looks like though.

First up— Weave Point is awesome. Professional drafting software is the best thing ever! It allows me to block substitute my echo patterns easily onto drawn network lines.

Where are these network lines coming from? They’re bitmaps of sound waves! I’ve recently begun a collaborative project with experimental musician Beth McDonald we’re calling “Weaving Chicago’s Waterways.” Using contact microphones, we’re collecting the physical sounds/vibrations from the Chicago river/lake shore and I’m using these sound waves as my initial network draft lines.

Block substitution is not isolated to network drafting— all different types of profile drafting utilize it, and you see it commonly with Doublecloth and Overshot weaving amongst others.

This is what the block draft looks like when substituted (this one is only 16 shafts, most of what I was doing at Praxis was 24-32 shafts).

And this is what it looks like woven. I did a few iterations based on my initial sound tests. We’re planning to go do a big sound scavenger hunt in April/May once the weather warms up a bit….

I’ve got time coming up at the end of April on the CMYK warp at LMRM Chicago to continue working through some of the weirdness in converting this type of patterning to the TC2 jacquard. For that weaving session, I will not have to turn-draft, so I can explore other Echo methods including multi-cloth.

Small Works Release

I love making large works, however, with the state of the world as it is, I’m regularly cycling through ideas on how to make art affordable to everyone. This small works release stems from the what I’ve learned through my end-of-year Instagram story sales the past few years, and through talks with other weavers on their pricing strategies when dealing with the time/labor/the perceived valuation of textiles.

This year I’ll be releasing small sets of small works (hopefully quarterly) as a way to offer more affordable options. Everything in this series will strive to be 20”x20” or under in size, come ready to hang (either with industrial velcro or stretched, depending), and will be no more than $500. This small scale does not necessarily mean less complex— it takes as much time, if not more, to design and weave two 20”x20” five color images on the TC2 as it does to weave one five color at 40”. To achieve the same amount of detail on my floor loom in the smaller scale, thinner yarn weights will need to be used. I’m really excited to see what comes of this work!

The first four are from my Praxis DWL Residency. The last two are from my last echo warp, woven simultaneously, not necessarily as a pair but certainly referencing one another. All part of my “Many Moons” series, these works will be stretched and ready to hang.