Birth Stories Canvases Accepted into 64th Parallel at the Fairbanks Arts Association - and an Honorable Mention!

I’m so excited and honored to be able to announce that Birth Stories #007 and Birth Stories #010 were accepted into the 64th Parallel Art Show at the Bear Gallery at Fairbanks Arts Association! Birth Stories #007 also got an Honorable Mention award from the juror. This is an annual fall juried show that open to all Interior Alaskan artists and it so beautiful to know that my pieces are showcased amongst such utter brilliance!

This is the one that received an Honorable Mention.

We attended the Opening Reception last night and it was a really lovely time. It is always fascinating to see the way that a juror constructs a juried show. There was a definite and consistent sense of curation and cohesion in the still incredibly diverse show this month.

You should definitely go see it if you are local to Fairbanks.

The 2023 64th Parallel show will be on display all month in the Bear Gallery at Pioneer Park in the third floor of the Centennial Center. Both pieces are framed and available for purchase through the Gallery.

After the Rain

After the Rain is an exploration of the joy and growth that can come after difficult times. This collection was equal parts a reflection of the emotional experience of entering the wider world again (engaging in work and school and in person friendships) after years of quarantine and isolation with small children, a reaffirmation of my love for the tradition and craft of handweaving, and a self indulgent explosion of rainbows.

The warp is a combination of hand dyed and commercially dyed 8/2 cottons, the ground weft is a commercially dyed 16/2 cotton.

The pattern wefts are approximately fingering weight, the rainbow above is hand spun while the vintage rainbow below is handdyed commercial sock yarn.

This is woven in a slightly modified traditional overshot pattern known as “Sun Moon and Stars” which is #74 in The Shuttlecraft Book of American Handweaving by Mary Meigs Atwater. Like much traditional overshot, it was woven on a four shaft loom. I deeply adore the juxtaposition of a very traditional overshot pattern with modern color choices and hand dyed yarns, so you can absolutely expect to see more explorations of this in future.

The After the Rain warp was actually going to in a quite different direction: full of moody blues and explorations of mental health until my 4 year old daughter requested “a rainbow sweater with a hood!” I certainly couldn’t say no! And once I got dyeing, all I wanted to do was put rainbows all over this warp. Thus, After the Rain was born. This ROYGVBV set of colorways is what I’m using in her sweater, and there’s a few iterations of it in the shop.

This collection is comprised of both woven pieces coming off of the loom, and corresponding hand dyed yarns. It is a way of creating a collection that I hope to explore further, working within a theme in all of my chosen mediums and releasing them into the world. Someday I hope to have my ish together to release them all at the same time and debut the entire collection vs. letting bits and pieces out ahead of others. But I’m very pleased with it overall!

The Birth Collection

The Birth Collection was begun in 2018, and the final piece finally came off of the loom in 2021.

The Birth Story series of mini tapestries debuted this month (January 2023) at my First Friday show and will be in the Imbolc shop update, so I thought that now is the perfect time to share about this collection


Birth is a threshold. Giving birth, the body becomes a portal, inviting life from one side of the veil into the other. Baby moves from darkness of womb like a seed in soil into the light of this world. We become the doorway for spirit. There is a special energy that emerges when we stand between two worlds. It is an energy that we share with sprouting plants, with hatching eggs, with algae blooms and flower buds, with animal mamas everywhere. 

We can prepare. We can dream. We can plan. And yet when the birth field opens around us, we can only surrender to the process. Sometimes it exactly as we imagined, and sometimes it is very very different. Whether a surgical birth or a vaginal one, a natural birth or a medically assisted one; we cannot control the energy of birth. We can harness ourselves to it, we can be the vessel for it, we can fight it, we can ride it, but we cannot control it. The body opens and baby crosses the threshold. It is a sacred thing this opening, a thing of blood and bone and flesh and pain and breath and sometimes excrement too, that brings a sweet new unfolding into the world.

I did much of the prep work for this warp -including spinning the supplemental yarn for Unfolding - in my last trimester of pregnancy, at the same time as I was doing my own personal spiritual preparations for birth, calling in my guides and allies and working with my ancestral spirits to provide a safe and protected birth space for my daughter and an easy labor for myself.  The talisman shown in some of the photos below features the goddess Frigg and was a focal point for much of my personal work. 

The warp is of longstaple cotton/hemp from Saltwater Rose Threads and is dyed in soft earth tones and florals.

Birth: Unfolding

This piece is named Unfolding and is a meditation on the journey of labor.  There are 10 supplementary warp threads of the handspun rose viscose.  One tail (and its fringe) starts with three supplements and the other seven are added in staggered along the length of the wrap so that the opposite tail (and its fringe) have 10 supplements.  This is meant to represent dilation.  3 cm dilation is (very broadly speaking) a benchmark for when you may admitted to hospital or when a midwife will tell you to head to the birth center.  It (again very broadly speaking) marks the entrance into the active phase of labor.  10 cm, of course, is full dilation.  


The weft is rose viscose from Saltwater Rose Threads and I dyed it in shades of soft pinks and taupes.  The dilation symbology is also embedded in the weft.  I dyed ten concentric circles into the blank canvas of the weft, along with three runes:  laguz for the waves of labor, flowing birth, and amniotic fluid; berkana for birth and new life and the goddess tree, and jera for fruitful harvest and the childbearing year.  I use the symbology of runes in my fiber practice as a way of (re)connecting to the spiritual paths of my ancestors. 

The handspun supplementary yarn is made of rose viscose which I dyed in the same floral tones as appear in the warp.  I spun it and then chain plied it which allows for a color grad along its length (in this instance it is multiple smaller color grads throughout the skein).  This means that the supplementary warp threads change color along the length of the warp and the weft inlays do likewise, fading through colors in a single inlay.


There are handspun weft inlays throughout the piece.  For the most part, they are worked in themes of three and ten.  Three for the three phases of labor, the three aspects of the goddess, the three visible phases of the moon, the triad of baby-mother-grandmother (for the baby is present in the uterus of the fetal mother in the womb of the grandmother).  Ten again for the 10 cm dilation and for the way that ten signifies completion and change in our decimal number system.  

Others are meandering inlays that trace different paths with single or multiple inlays going at once that felt very much like storytelling as I did them.

Near one tail, there is a twined inlay of the Berkana rune (the same as is dyed into the weft.) Berkana is an ancient word for the birch tree, and the runes symbolically represents growth and rebirth. It is a rune of new beginnings. It indicates good news, birth, fertility and times of family rejoicing. 

Birth: Surrender

Birth Surrender was woven as a semi custom, so its design was in collaboration with the customer to whom the wrap went home. These collaborations are deeply personal to the person for whom I am working and involves intimate and often private visual symbology.

This piece features a hand dyed weft of silk/nettle and a double heart inlay on one tail that I spun from hand dyed superwash targhee.

Birth Healing

Birth Healing was woven as a semi custom, so its design was in collaboration with the customer to whom the wrap went home. These collaborations are deeply personal to the person for whom I am working and involves intimate and often private visual symbology.

This piece was an incredible honor to work on. It involves inlays and weft yarn changes with color blocking patterned intuitively and based on numerical symbology. It includes inlays of mohair locks and a variety of handspun and commercial yarns, hemstitching and faux lace inlays, and a large ogham inlay. I’m utterly in love with this piece and deeply grateful for the chance to create it.

Birth Story

This mixed media wall art piece has a blog post all of its own: check it out!

Birth Stories Series

The Birth Stories mini tapestry series that debuted at Just the Tips during my January 2022 First Friday exhibition grew directly out of this collection. This is an ongoing series that you are sure to hear more about in future! Stay tuned.