About Fleet of Passage
Fleet of Passage brings people together to explore immigration, belonging, and place through collective art-making.
Through hands-on workshops, participants create paper vessels in response to personal histories, memories, and ideas of movement. As the vessels gather, the fleet grows into a collective exhibition.
Suspended in space, the forms move in flowing formations. Some appear intact. Others suggest interrupted journeys — passages altered by fear, circumstance, resilience, or change.
Every vessel carries a story.
What Happens in a Workshop
Workshops begin with a shared table, simple materials, and a stack of identical kraft paper hulls.
Each participant begins with the same form. From there, the vessel may be painted, written on, cut, reshaped, opened, or entirely transformed. Some remain close to the original structure. Others are expanded, distressed, or reconstructed.
There is no single way to respond.
When a vessel feels complete, it is signed, assigned a number, and added to the fleet.
Each contribution changes the whole.
The Living Archive
Each vessel is cataloged and assigned a unique identifying number.
Participants may include their name and a written statement connected to their work. These narratives are preserved in a growing online archive, allowing the installation to expand not only physically, but historically.
As the fleet travels, both the installation and its archive evolve — preserving stories across communities and locations.
Fleet of Passage functions as installation, participatory workshop, and living archive.
About the Artist
I received a BFA in Three-Dimensional Design and later ran a small graphic design business while raising my family. After many years rooted in design and community life, I returned to dedicated studio practice with the guidance of an art mentor, rebuilding a body of work grounded in material exploration.
I work across painting, printmaking, ceramics, and natural materials. I am especially drawn to humble and found materials—kraft paper, local vines, and mud—and the ways they can be cut, layered, reshaped, and transformed through the process of making.
My current work includes ceramic and mixed-media vessels as well as larger two-dimensional pieces exploring themes of home, displacement, and spiritual transformation.
Fleet of Passage grows from this foundation. The shared vessel form becomes both a structure and an invitation. What begins as something simple can be opened, distressed, rebuilt, or expanded—shaped by many hands.
Each time the fleet gathers, it changes.