I have been folding paper cranes for as long as I can remember. Whenever restless, my hands search for scrap paper and get to work making their forms. I leave the birds behind in the places I fold them, and there is now a trail of cranes following me wherever I go.

Two years ago, I made a difficult but necessary decision to leave Notre Dame. I admitted myself to a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma where I began the process of recovering from an eating disorder that had cyclically disabled me since I was fourteen.

On my journey back home, I began to understand the purpose that making art has in my life. In sickness, creating with my hands gave me a sense of self. It helped me reconnect my body and my mind. It helped me feel solid during a time of so much loss.

Recovery has allowed me to slowly gain back a world of sorrow and joy, of pain and ease. My thesis is a reflection of these emotions. It embodies the experience of reconnecting with the rich world of emotion that I am privileged to share with the people around me.

I paint the Sandhill cranes and this beautiful Nebraska prairieland to celebrate the feeling of life after loss and the strength gained from struggle. With a crescendo of kettling calls signaling their arrival each year, sandhill cranes bring hope each time they pass through Nebraska. They sing in the sun and the snow, to the wind and the water with the strength and grace they have carried with them from the untamable past. Through time and change, their migration sings of persistence and survival. Anyone lucky enough to see these majestic birds in person will hopefully understand the sense of wonder and joy I feel when looking back at my own journey and in finding my way back home.