I learned to sew about the time I learned to write. Today I keep on writing and sewing: I keep journals, compile field notes, and I make quilts. It often strikes me how very similar those activities are. How the sentences snake along the page in much the same way as a line of stitches through the fabric. In my current body of work I use screen printing as a means of bringing together my love for long hand writing and for the stitched line.

In the Secret Diary series I look inside, into the intimate space where journals are written, where quilts are stitched. The pages of my Secret Diaries are actual journal entries screen printed on fabric. The text records the flow of thoughts and the meandering of attention as I write on the screen with fabric dye. Each fabric page is a layering of different entries, the superimposition of a day onto the next one. I use the collaged and stitched diary fragments to speak about intimacy, communication, as well as privacy and isolation.

Each quilt is an open notebook, the oversized text extending an invitation to read. Yet the stitched diaries prove to be unreadable, revealing just the outline of a life story: rhythm and pattern, lines and layers. The pressure, intensity, and speed of the hand written line imply the texture of emotions. It is an open book but a Secret Diary.