The ephemeral childhood is not as fleeting as we are raised to understand. Moments are carried with us like souvenirs as we grow and age. Where once choices were made for us, we learn to make them for ourselves, and in turn we choose what to keep.

For many of us, we speak through what we make, a visual language that only our kind can interpret. We connect through our queer identities, our love for making our own homes, our affinity for spreading our color like a peacock's wings, and we disconnect from the life designed for us by others, ill-fitting and restrictive, disoriented by our sense of a home built for someone else.

​Growing Pains is a testament to my collected self, a visual interpretation of the childhood souvenirs I hold onto through the language I now use in adulthood. The aspects of my queer identity, and my participation in our community's tradition of using color and playfulness, spoken through the work I design, weave and manufacture, comes together while I make my art my own home.

Art-making is deeply personal, and often traumatic, but much like our metamorphosis from child to adult, the process results in something beautiful. It requires patience, learning and creativity, but emerges in tactile ways, to have and to hold. It becomes as much a part of me as my identity.

​These are the souvenirs I wish to keep..