We fill our lives with loops and lines. Lines drawn to place us, to mark us. They can be as sustaining as veins or as restricting as bars. Just as the world circles and cycles. Our bodies run on tiny loops. Our bodies tell our stories, where the past, present and future are all connected. This portfolio explores what's needed to redefine and reflect on the lines we draw, the loops we follow and the stories that come from this. I would love to hear your reflections. Please contact me. You can write a note, a poem, a critique, or ask me any questions you may have.
Note: My paints are made with natural earth and mineral pigments. They are completely safe and sustainable.
Natural Earth Paint sources clay and minerals prevalent in native soils all over the world.
Note: My paints are made with natural earth and mineral pigments. They are completely safe and sustainable.
Natural Earth Paint sources clay and minerals prevalent in native soils all over the world.
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Slipping Away
I, Me and Mine
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To Feel Different
De Las Aguas
Believe in the Power of Three
The Queen of In-Between
This piece is 1 of 7 stories that lives in the book; Shapeshifters: Bodies Like Water. This whole book actually began with Tom. At age 68, Tom began reintroducing himself to his lifelong friends, Ira and Nadine Baumgarten, in a new way. It was Tom’s exploration of gender fluidity that put everything in motion for this book. This piece is an exploration of Tom’s femme self – Toni. The red nails, thigh high heeled boots and leather is how she wanted the world to see this version of herself for the first time. She’s not just one thing. She moves in-between, never fully seen. And yet, I see her queen-self, perched on a cliff ready for everyone to see who she's become.
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Las Mascaras
Somewhere Between Then and Now
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Cola de Zorro
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Imprint
Red
Corner
Across the Line
Stolen Sisters
-11° C
Trace Back
Rangers
Listen For
The Witches
Water Shed
My body is a place that pulls water.
A place that responds to waters touch. Soft like foam, old like stone. 
Currents
Blue
Frontline Bodies
Unfurling
Wombs Like Water
We who walk and wander wombs like water.
Wonder not the weather change, when we feel eternal rage. **Nosotros que caminamos y deambulamos dentro del vientre como el agua. No es de extrañar que el tiempo no cambie cuando sentimos rabia eterna.** Poem by Miranda Crawford 
From the Cracks
Buried
Manoomin
Wild rice beds in Minnesota have already suffered great losses, with estimates up to 70% loss of original growth. Existing and proposed pipelines pose a direct threat to remaining manoomin beds, the only ones in the world. Atquetzali carries this rice as an extension of herself, her ancestors, and future generations.
Series from the Art of Resistance: Embodying & Reclaiming the Sacred Exhibit Co-artists: Heidi Affi, Dianna Lynn 
Sumergirse en el Espejo
Monte Que Arde
Desde las profundidades que navegó de noche, sale la luna.
Ella arde intensamente para encontrarme. Solo los valientes van a las profundidades. Lo malo no es tan malo cuando en su magia me oculto. Ella dice que nuestros cuerpos cuentan nuestras historias. Donde el pasado, presente y futuro están conectados. La prisa no es parte del ritmo natural del universo. Somos almas recorriendo tiempos infinitos. Y mediante esto compartimos mucho. Ahora que lo pienso, nunca he visto un árbol apurándose por crecer. 
People Touch
Euphoria
Rising from Concrete: Voice, Movement & Color
Clothing by Minneapolis Made
Photos by Bruce Silcox 
Nibi
Lucia displays the devastating effects tar sands pollution is having on the water. This literal representation of the spilling and leaking of tar sand pipelines stands as direct resistance to the Enbridge Line 3 Replacement Pipeline. This line promises continued denigration of sacred resources, treaty rights in occupied lands, and indigenous people as a whole.
Series from the Art of Resistance: Embodying & Reclaiming the Sacred Exhibit Co-artists: Alma Lora, Dianna Lynn 
Lichen Prayer
These domes were created to measure everything about the trees, plants, fungi, root systems and water levels. They measure in real time the impacts of increased heat and carbon dioxide. Welcome to a warmer future? But the future looks different to me - in the future I talk to these trees, pray with the lichen, taste the water inside the mud. The future looks like us, under the tamarack buds, making eyes at each other. I am dancing under the spruce trees. They remind me that I am not separate from this bog and that you and I hold each other in evolutionary time.
Learn more about the Marcell Experimental Forest Research Sites Poem by Gayatri Narayanan 
I saw you
in your eyes i saw wisdom beyond our conditions of violence
i saw ferns unfurl, i saw waters so deep, i saw murky questions, i saw you choose me. 
Black Box
Mpls Citizen
Dusted
Coloring Book
Wedged
Double Line
Nobody promised us permanence. We lose things because nothing is given forever. Impermanence is the only forever and no lines drawn have to be followed.
Nadie nos promete permanecer. Perdemos algo pero nada se nos ha dado para siempre. La ausencia es lo que dura para siempre y como nada es para siempre las lineas que no se han dibujado deben ser seguidas. 
Nesting
Lavender
Streak
Whip
Wall Street
Red Dress
Turtle Island
Our backs provide us with the strength needed to carry our hardships. Just as Turtle Island carries each of us, we must carry her, for she is a part of us. In the Anishinaabe creation story, the turtle, mikinaak, offers her back to bear the weight of the new Earth. The seven dots that circle the eyes of both Samantha and the turtle symbolize the seven generations. In this way, we are honoring the generations that have lived in balance with Turtle Island and will continue these traditions into the future.
Series from the Art of Resistance: Embodying & Reclaiming the Sacred Exhibit Co-artists: Jada Brown, Dianna Lynn 
21 Eyes
I'mprisoned 圄
In collaboration with Michelle Wan Lok Chan for her solo dance performance and installation surrounding criminal justice reform and mental health. This painting is symbolic of the systemic hands that hold people and the role media plays in our perception and justification of mass incarceration.
Renewal
Room
Off Center
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MURDERED MISSING INDIGENOUS WOMEN
In honor of all our lost sisters, this series reminds us of the indigenous women taken by a system of violent crime. With each pipeline project comes an influx of non-native oil workers. These man camps have devastated communities. Native women, who are already 2.5 times more likely to be sexually assaulted, are especially vulnerable as the 1978 Supreme Court case Oilphant v. Suquamish stripped tribes of the right to prosecute non-natives who perpetrate crimes on reservations. Silenced by black handprints across their mouths, gripping their throats, and clawing at their dresses, these women show the violence that passes from generation to generation.
Series from the Art of Resistance: Embodying & Reclaiming the Sacred Exhibit Co-artists: Eryn Wise, Dianna Lynn 
Spinal
Río Salado
Sown
Estrellas y Musgo
Overgrowth
Pulling Ties
Take a string, knotted at the center.
Pull it free again. Skin fills with this unraveling. When it's time, both lay red back to now frozen earth. 
Rose-tinted Glasses
My Body Is Not A Temple
Cloud-clothed she bathes in sky, defying: the body is not a temple.
Seeds from tailbone embrace back, shanty library’s female saints gasping breeze rung to expanding, I not I. This is more, bigger than, her eyes, jaws cupped by blue heart in throat dissolves in sighes. But this does not belie her strength: releases as she grasps, white now blue on turtle’s back. Poem by Arpita Bajpeyi 
Honeycrisp
Both Are Me
If My Bones Could Speak
Tidal
Sisters
Alter-Ego
All Eyes On You
She who goes unseen wears a cloak of eyes. She, the exploited brown body. She, the neglected mother nature. This triptych symbolizes both the unavoidable presence of humanity within the web of life and how we distance ourselves from those we deem “other”. She who sees all, sees you.
From the depths that are sailed at night, the moon rises.
She burns bright to find me. Only the brave ones go to such depths. The bad is not so bad when I’m hiding behind her magic. She says that our bodies tell our stories. Where the past, present and future are all connected. Haste is not part of the natural rhythm of the universe. We are souls traveling infinite times. And through this we share so much. Now that I think about it, I have never seen a tree rush to grow. Poem by Yahara Lucila Salmerón & Jenny Zander 
Isla
Scratch
On Ice
Brujería
Rose-tinted Glasses
Enzymes
Red Rain
Pin-Up
Performance & installation artist: Nico Athene
My Other Face
Urge
Self
Turning one body against another, turning oneself against their body. It’s one thing to see yourself, it’s a whole other to accept what you see. To see beyond the sum of each part. To consider yourself a work of art.
Las Manos
Buddy's Bench
In collaboration with Ira and Nadine Baumgarten for the book A Night On Buddy's Bench, this painting is meant to embody Autumn: a time of transition. Additionally, it reflects themes of loss and distance. Purchase this evocative book for a story exploring end of life questions. All proceeds go to the Hospice & Palliative Care Association of New York State.
Trail
Down in Denver
Autumn
Winter
Undoing
Guacamaya
Coldwater Spring
Strong Buffalo, Tatanka Ohitika
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