Through reclaiming natural, mundane, and ceremonial found materials, Lydia creates spacious wayfinders for experiences in life that are beyond language. As she sews, tapes, seals, and wraps salvaged materials into new relationships with one another, care and poetic meaning arise, greater than the sum of their parts. Her sculptures reference reliquaries, stained glass, and quilts—narrative structures where emotions, personal symbols, mysticism, mythology, trauma research, and social theories can coexist. The work has led her to forage in dumpsters, highways, farms, compost piles, apothecaries, free boxes, fabric stores, and florist shops. Her work serves as a personal record of her own and others’ losses and transformations, becoming a connective force.
Lydia has been an artist-in-residence at the Corporation of Yaddo, Champlain College, Vermont Studio Center, the Lab Program in Mexico City, and AS220. She lives, works, and receives many of her materials in Burlington, Vermont.
january 2025 practice reflections
Through a Mended Portal an essay by Rachel Jones