"On all sides are ghosts, not of the dead, but of living people."

                                                  -Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio

My roots are as shallow as my mason jar of water will allow.  As I travel, my pockets become heavy with burdening collections of memories and trifles; they become the baggage that defines the shapes of my stories, which so often exist as pages loosely blowing in the wind.  My collections are clues and artifacts of my ever-evolving personal journey, and they reflect experiences and choices I continue to lug from one place to the next.  These places I pass through possess their own histories, stories, and characters.  Often, these people and places do their best to swallow me, stop me in my fleeting tracks, and pin me down.  I have crossed paths with many villains who wear masks of good intentions.   As in any developing story, antagonists catalyze the conflict and perpetuate the story, and I am working to form my own resolutions. 

In the revelation of my story, I present my collections of objects and characters so that I may assert power over my baggage of fancies, the artifacts, and fears, the villains.  As a woman traveling through space and time alone these villains, mostly men, attempt to conquer and colonize my wayward, wandering soul, and they represent fears and struggles that must be conquered in order for me to grow and move forward with my personal journey.

            By depicting these characters as wooden puppets, I am extracting them from my story and shifting the power as I contort and manipulate their now helpless figures.  This time, the villains are pressed against the wall, unable to escape as the audience passes before their immobilized states of exposure.  The shallow depths of these characters are exposed as their features are burned upon their thin, wooden forms, just as their memories are burned upon my burdened psyche.