Completed in September, 2025, “Feed The Peeling Wallpaper” is made up of vintage wallpaper samples, newspaper clippings, a string of discarded lace, old doll clothes, tiny wooden pegs, handmade clay ladybugs, and a glow in the dark crucifix.

This piece was born out of my sincere infatuation for peeling and decaying wallpaper. To me, there is nothing more beautiful and entrancing than something once so full of life, silent dying. I found the vintage wallpaper samples and newspaper clippings online. My original plan was to find a single roll of vintage wallpaper and use the same pattern throughout the entirety of the piece, but that proved to be a greater task than I imagined at the time. A pack of old samples was the best that I could get for a reasonable price. I felt lost and conflicted throughout the process of creating this piece. It never quite looked how I had originally imagined it in my head. Although I am grateful to those frustrating diversions now as I believe it turned out even better than that original vision.

Once I had finished laying down the foundation of wallpaper samples and newspaper clippings, the work evoked a different feeling in me than I anticipated. Instead of feeling as though I was peering through an eerie window of decay, it felt like I was travelling back in time, into a memory. I saw my grandmother in the small floral patterns and the delicate faces of the women in the newspaper. I felt the presence of an entire generation of women, cooking in their kitchens, praying over their families, creating perfectly delicate spaces for their loved ones to orbit. I found the crucifix at the thrift store and felt drawn to its dark wood and off-white features. Only after hanging the piece above my bed for a few weeks, did I discover that the crucifix glows an alien-ish pale green in the dark. It instantly found its place in the middle of the piece, aligning the work with a silent sense of hope and fear. The makeshift clothesline felt like a natural element to add, as a tie to the content repetitions of domesticity I envision alongside this generation of women. The doll clothes not only aided to the scale and composition of the piece, but attached a well placed feeling of fragile femininity and nurtured childhood play.

With these few elements, the piece appeared done, but never felt quite right. It was only after I had gotten the idea to add the handmade ladybugs I had created for “Soft Concrete”, a photoshoot I had just completed, that I became really excited about the work. I positioned the ladybugs to appear as if they were crawling onto the piece from the bottom right corner, and travelling to explore the entire canvas. After I had placed my last ladybug, the piece finally felt complete. Their presence captured the final needed feeling of something left behind, left to nature, but never entirely forgotten.