I grew up making utilitarian/craft objects, like quilts, knits, decorative objects with my mother & grandmother, and later in art therapy as an adult I began to make art as a way of making sense of personal experiences, personal history and my own mental health Through my MFA at SAIC my practice has in some ways continued to work through personal experiences and icons, and a piece like this the construction feels in many way like these “simpler processes” like self-drafting patterns for clothes, or frosting a cake the physicalness of this project felt homely, which was a comfort as I explored the subject matter. “technically, I guess, the word ‘no’ was never said” is an exploration, a twice-removed self-portraiture of a bodily feeling, and both a depiction and an attempt to process that depiction of the trauma of assault, depersonalization/objectification, and freezing in response to fear.