While all of my works are from my personal stories, this one in particular sits close to my heart. This sculpture is a portrait of my wife. In the installation, she stands holding an empty woven laundry basket. Behind her, hung on a laundry line that is installed across the gallery, hangs a quilt that she and I hand-stitched together across the span of six months, as we watched and waited while the case for giving mixed status families like us, citizenship, ping ponged across the courts. We ended up being one of a handful of families’ stories that were used in court to advocate for this legislation.

 

The pattern replicates birds flying behind her in the sky, inspired by the American prairie-era quilt pattern called "Flying Geese.” had been looking forward to its installation and, at last, seeing the birds soaring into the sky behind my wife's back: free and boundaryless in their migration. I've been thinking this sentence so much to myself, it sounds aloud and alive in the room with me, ¿Y si fuéramos pájaros?—What if we were birds? What if borders didn't break families?