Last year I was struggling with severe anxiety, and I was clinically diagnosed with OCD. While I was aware of these symptoms my entire life, it was with an official diagnosis that I began to grapple with a new perception of myself.
Looking to my past, I remembered instances of my mother teaching me to crochet. Crochet was a practice that was ingrained in my family history, and for me, it was meditative and calming; anxieties would become numbed as I let my brain focus on repetitive movements. I cannot ignore the irony that the release of repetitive and obsessive thoughts is mediated by other, creative, repetitive actions.
Yearning to express my fears, questions, and identity struggle with my diagnosis, I found an analogy in crochet. The threads of the yarn are like thought pathways that become repeated in the downward spiral of obsession. In this way, I find the crochet fibers to both act like abstracted avenues of thought as well as visually resemble neurons in the brain.
The goal of my work is to present what feels to be an anomalous presence--something that first may appear beautiful but ultimately feels uncomfortable in the space of the viewer
