After the passing of my mother in 2006, I discovered she had saved all of my parents’ cancelled checks. Not wanting to throw them away, I began folding them into simple origami shapes. My origami pieces have now been seen in several exhibits. Here is a statement written for one of the exhibits:

The Cost of Living

Art can both trigger memories or be made of memories. With The Cost of Living series, I hope to accomplish both through the use of recycled materials that draw on actual preserved objects that indirectly record the past and can serve to stimulate remembrances in the viewer. The simple origami shapes, made from my parents’ cancelled checks, form a cryptic diary of their everyday life recording a past that, although I experienced at least in part, exists now only in memory. The formal organization of the work is often inspired by the symmetry and repetitive patterns of quilts. The work reflects my interest in family and local history combined with design elements and the use of recycled materials in both the pieces and in framing and presentation.