Through Lines

I've been thinking about who I am as an artist. I do different things but they all have through lines.

Maybe you've been thinking about this too—looking at your own life and wondering how the pieces connect. What patterns run through your choices, your struggles, your moments of growth? The through lines are there, even when they're hard to see.

A through line is the thread that connects seemingly separate experiences. It's the recurring theme that shows up in your work, your relationships, your dreams, your fears. In theater, it's what holds a character's journey together across all the different scenes. In life, it's what makes your story coherent, even when it feels scattered.

Through lines matter because they reveal who you actually are, not who you think you should be. They show up in the work you're drawn to, the problems you can't stop thinking about, the ways you naturally respond to crisis or joy. When you can see your through lines clearly, you stop fighting against your nature and start working with it.

Ode to a Lost Love

For over a decade, I've been cutting things up. Shredding thousands of photographs. Slicing through paintings that go back twenty-five years. Buzzing off my hair and preserving it in jars. Dismantling mannequins I painted to look like my virtual avatar.

The cutting started as something I couldn't stop doing. Now I see it differently. Each cut was making space—literally and in my head—for something new to happen.

I've always used my body as both subject and medium. Not because I love how I look. The opposite, actually. I started my artist statement with "I hate pictures of myself" for years. But hating something doesn't mean you stop working with it. Sometimes it means you work harder.

The Perceive Me project came from that hate. I asked fifty-eight artists to create their vision of me while I posed naked for them. Every session changed me. Not just because I was being seen, but because I was performing being seen. There's a difference.

Before that, I created Gracie Kendal, my avatar in Second Life. She was everything I thought I should be—tall, thin, blonde, elegant. I took photos of both of us every day, creating conversations between my real body and my ideal self. By the end, I understood something about living with a disordered mind around food and body size.

The through line isn't just about bodies, though that's where it started for me. It's about the space between who we are and who we think we should be. The cutting creates that space. The performing explores it. The collaborating fills it with something better than what was there before.

What creates space in your life? Maybe it's journaling that tears apart old stories you tell yourself. Maybe it's therapy that dismantles patterns you inherited. Maybe it's a creative practice that lets you experiment with different versions of who you could be. The method matters less than the willingness to make room for change.

I've worked in hospital emergency departments since I was fourteen. I know how fast a life can disappear. That knowledge sits underneath everything I make. The urgency. The need to use whatever time we have to question the baggage we carry forward.

You probably have your own version of this urgency. Maybe it came from loss, illness, a moment when you realized time isn't infinite. Maybe it's just the quiet recognition that you don't want to spend your life performing someone else's version of who you should be.

Pow

My flat files are empty now. I've cut up everything. My archive of the past has become thousands of fragments. I'm standing at a threshold, holding pieces of my former selves, asking what comes after deconstruction.

Reconstruction/Renewal is my answer. The fragments become raw material for large-scale wall sculptures. Metaphorical skins made from painted canvas, shredded photographs, personal artifacts. They explore how identity gets broken down and rebuilt constantly.

This isn't nostalgia. We can't return to who we were, but we can build something new from the pieces. The sculptures take up space aggressively. They refuse the diminishment society demands from aging bodies, from women, from anyone marked by illness or difference.

The through lines are becoming clearer. Destruction as creation. Performance as healing. Collaboration as resistance. The body as battleground and sanctuary. Art as a way of processing change itself.

Your through lines might look different. Maybe yours are about building instead of breaking down. Maybe they're about solitude instead of collaboration. Maybe they're about words instead of images, movement instead of stillness, teaching instead of performing. The specifics don't matter. What matters is recognizing the patterns that keep showing up, the themes your life keeps circling back to.

I'm also creating new work with the intention of eventually destroying it. What does it mean to make something beautiful knowing it won't last? The question feels important right now.

Maybe the real through line is this: I make art about the things that scare me most. My body. My mortality. Other people's opinions. The possibility that I'm not enough as I am. The work doesn't make the fear go away, but it transforms it into something useful.

Asemic Drawings

What scares you most? What do you avoid looking at directly? Those might be exactly the places where your most important work lives. Not necessarily art—maybe it's parenting, organizing, building something, fixing something, connecting with people who need what you have to offer. The fear doesn't have to stop you. It can guide you toward what matters.

I'm still a work in progress. Some days I feel the change—more considerate of my body, less worried about how others see me. Other days the old patterns come back hard. But the work continues. The cutting and rebuilding, the performing and collaborating. Each piece I make is another small step away from the woman who hated pictures of herself toward someone I'm still becoming.

You're a work in progress too. The through lines in your life aren't destinations—they're the paths you keep walking, the questions you keep asking, the ways you keep showing up for yourself and others. Trust the patterns. Follow the threads. See where they want to take you next.

"Perceive Me" Collaboration with Baha Danesh