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Behind the Work - Stacks
Behind the Work - Stacks I made my first Stack in grad school, around 2007. It was a year after my sister Marci passed, and I was deep in my grief. Books had appeared in my work before, but as closed, representational objects. I started opening them up. The inspiration came partly from one of Marci's housemates, Maura, who used old fabric pattern books as a form of stimming. Marci had cerebral palsy and was in a wheelchair — she didn't speak, and had little control over her body. Watching Maura move through those pages stayed with me. The resulting object stayed with me too — it was this beautiful record of an action repeated. After Marci died, I turned to my work to process what I was carrying. The work turned inward and abstract, using pages and paper as objects to express the deep, ongoing conversation I was having with myself. I started letting these objects move. I let go of control. Around the same time, I took a trip to the Anniversary Narrows. The big slabs of rock falling into one another, each one affecting the one before and after it, felt like a metaphor for life — for what it means to release your grip on how things are supposed to go. I was introduced to porcelain around this time too, and fell in love with it for its strength and its fragility. It was the perfect material to hold all of that: the inner grief, the loss, the processing. The whiteness of the clay, the raw clay fired, felt stripped away from other ceramic signifiers. More raw. More vulnerable. The first Stack looked like a pile of white Post-it notes. I had carved X's and O's into them. Kisses and hugs to my sister. Working repetitively is a form of grieving. Every time you repeat the action, the object is different. You are different. Eventually, all the moving will lead you somewhere else. And it did. The kiln took hold at times too, allowing these stacks to move more than I had planned, fully removing my control over the final outcome. That felt right. That was the point. This body of work continues, though I am in a much different place with my grief. I come back to these for the same reason I return to any repetitive work: every time, they are different. I am different. I hope this offers a thread of connection — to my material choices, my thematic choices, and why I choose process-based work. Commission inquiries are welcome.
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My 2026 Reading List: 100 Books, 24 Intentional Reads
2026 is my year to bring more reading back into my life. After years of feeling disconnected from books, I’m choosing a gentle and intentional approach. Below is a list of 100 fiction and nonfiction books. I plan to read 12 fiction and 12 non-fiction titles over the year, about two per month. And if it was any question, yes—listening to audiobooks counts! Because comprehension and meaning matter more than format. Read this NPR article about why: https://www.npr.org/2025/07/07/nx-s1-5454723/does-listening-to-an-audiobook-count-as-reading Why Reading Became Hard (and How I’m Reframing It) Reading became difficult for me when I started treating it like a task. Graduate school required 200–300 pages a week of dense art theory and history on top of my own research. Important, foundational, all the things—but didn't quite hit with my dopamine receptors. After grad school, I was finished with all books for a long time. Years later, I found my way back to books. But I was shy to share, as it was a lot of comfort, fluffy reads: vampire novels, Emily Henry books, the occasional best seller. Those books did exactly what I needed—they reminded me of the joys of sinking into a story. I became more engaged with nonfiction again during my business class with Holly Howard. Maybe it was reading The E-Myth alongside Braiding Sweetgrass. I found the best gift of reading in these pages: curiosity. I'm so excited to read right now. And even better, I get to cuddle up with my 8-year old and read together. Does it get any better?? The Goal for 2026 100 books on (or off!) the list 24 books read 12 fiction 12 nonfiction No other pressures. No expectations on how I choose to read these books or in what order. Just reading to feel curious and engaged. My Nonfiction Reading List Creative Practice & Thinking The Work of Art — Adam Moss Ways of Seeing — John Berger The Shape of Content — Ben Shahn The Shape of a Pocket — John Berger The Craftsman — Richard Sennett The Nature of Order — Christopher Alexander On Looking — Alexandra Horowitz Silence — John Cage The Forest Unseen — David George Haskell Pilgrim at Tinker Creek — Annie Dillard Biz and $$$ Profit First — Mike Michalowicz Company of One — Paul Jarvis The Psychology of Money — Morgan Housel Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits! — Greg Crabtree Small Giants — Bo Burlingham Managing Oneself — Peter Drucker The Long View — Brian Fetherstonhaugh Good Strategy / Bad Strategy — Richard Rumelt Founder/Leader Thinking in Bets — Annie Duke High Output Management — Andrew Grove Leadership and Self-Deception — The Arbinger Institute Turn the Ship Around! — L. David Marquet The Fifth Discipline — Peter Senge The Art of Action — Stephen Bungay Ops How to Do Nothing — Jenny Odell Timefulness — Marcia Bjornerud The Checklist Manifesto — Atul Gawande Atomic Habits — James Clear Work Clean — Dan Charnas Slow Productivity — Cal Newport Design Heavy In Praise of Shadows — Jun’ichirō Tanizaki The Eyes of the Skin — Juhani Pallasmaa Objects of Desire — Adrian Forty Material Matters — László Moholy-Nagy The Poetics of Space — Gaston Bachelard Everything Else Co-Intelligence — Ethan Mollick The Age of Surveillance Capitalism — Shoshana Zuboff Tools for Thought — Howard Rheingold The Art of Gathering — Priya Parker Antifragile — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Seeing Like a State — James C. Scott The Timeless Way of Building — Christopher Alexander Being Mortal — Atul Gawande Range — David Epstein Finite and Infinite Games — James P. Carse Thinking in Systems — Donella H. Meadows A Pattern Language — Christopher Alexander et al. My Fiction Reading List In My Ann Patchett Era Bel Canto — Ann Patchett Commonwealth — Ann Patchett The Dutch House — Ann Patchett Still Life — Sarah Winman A Place for Us — Fatima Farheen Mirza The Lincoln Highway — Amor Towles Rules of Civility — Amor Towles The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry — Gabrielle Zevin The Interestings — Meg Wolitzer Evvie Drake Starts Over — Linda Holmes Post-Apocalyptic Station Eleven — Emily St. John Mandel Sea of Tranquility — Emily St. John Mandel Good Omens — Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman The Measure — Nikki Erlick Oona Out of Order — Margarita Montimore The Power — Naomi Alderman The Midnight Library — Matt Haig The Golem and the Jinni — Helene Wecker Kinda Dreamy The Night Circus — Erin Morgenstern The Starless Sea — Erin Morgenstern Life of Pi — Yann Martel Neverwhere — Neil Gaiman The Snow Child — Eowyn Ivey The Housekeeper and the Professor — Yoko Ogawa Dark Humor The Humans — Matt Haig Slaughterhouse-Five — Kurt Vonnegut Less — Andrew Sean Greer The Maid — Nita Prose Sourdough — Robin Sloan Where’d You Go, Bernadette — Maria Semple Anxious People — Fredrik Backman Convenience Store Woman — Sayaka Murata New-ish Exit West — Mohsin Hamid Hamnet — Maggie O’Farrell A Gentleman in Moscow — Amor Towles The Shadow of the Wind — Carlos Ruiz Zafón The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay — Michael Chabon The Sentence — Louise Erdrich Let’s Talk Books This list is not for optimization, it's for research and reentry into my book era. I realized that while I have a sense of what kind of fiction pulls me, I often get overwhelmed when looking for that next read, a common problem for my ADHD brain. My hope is that these lists help me gently seek for my next set of pages and enjoy the journey of discovering books again. If you have recommendations or strong opinions, I’d love to hear about it. Share in the comments or send me an email—I'd love to hear about it. Here’s to curiosity, ease, and cozy corners fillled with books!
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