costume design

​Clothes are the first thing to notice about someone; they form the outer shell of the projected identity. I use my clothes to signal my commitment to the past. I also use them to study the past. By using everyday historical fashion in my wardrobe, I am physically able to walk in the shoes of historical subjects, gleaning many insights into daily living in the past.
My clothes are also a response to modern fast fashion. The phenomenon of clothes waste is a recent one, produced by a culture that makes clothes to only last a season.  Throughout history, cloth was a valuable commodity and clothes were meant to last through generations; I seek to bring this mindset back into the present by making durable clothes that resist waste.  Production takes much time and effort, but I feel that slow fashion is necessary when clothes made with artificial fibers and shoddy construction are thrown away to contribute to the suffocation of our planet with plastic.

chamorro works

Chamorros are the indigenous people of Guam and the Marianas Islands in the Pacific Ocean.  Since the colonial period and the age of European expansion across the oceans, Chamorros have been colonized by many outsiders, first by the Spanish and in the modern day by the United States.  The U.S. Military is reluctant to give control of the strategic stopping point in the Pacific over to its inhabitants, and to this day, over 30% of the small island is owned by the U.S. Navy.  It is common for Chamorros to join the armed forces in order to gain access to this land and to the much-needed financial benefits the military can provide.
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This is what my grandfather did in the 1950s.  In that era, joining the military was also the only way off the island, where living was hard and expensive.  In the 1960s, my grandparents immigrated to the American South and raised their family on army bases in a form of indentured servitude. My grandmother documented these years through photographs which have been passed down to me.  I seek to use these photographs to expose Chamorro culture and history to a wider audience.

collaborations