My creative endeavors often serve as channels for expressing gratitude, joy, and encouragement, while honoring and showcasing my cultural roots. Additionally, I believe art is a platform for reflection and reimagining—a medium of advocacy aimed at fostering a world defined by empathy, compassion, and equity. For me, this journey begins with supporting and promoting fellow cultural artists & artisans. Through directly acquiring goods from their cultures of origin and traditional creation techniques I aim to uphold and honor their cultural significance and to ensure that fellow entrepreneurs thrive.

I believe that art holds space for all who wish to embrace it. Art allows us to break free of conventional norms—to connect and build community through shared mediums no matter how we may differ. Art heals, art empowers, art disrupts and dismantles- it challenges and delights, but most of all it is transcendent and preserves that which we hold dear.

Identity Statement

I identify as a Mixed & MENA (Middle Eastern & North African) woman. I am the daughter of immigrants from Asia & Europe. As the first family member born in the United States on my father's side, I explore my Turkish (and larger West Asian) culture in particular through my art. I am living and creating on the ancestral homelands of the Piscataway & Nacotchtank people. I was born and raised in Washington state on the ancestral homelands of the Coast Salish, Snohomish, Stillaguamish, and Suquamish people.

Crafting Acknowledgements

Inspired by crafting magazines gifted from my late babanne (grandmother) Esma, I learned to bead through the generous gifting of ancestral knowledge via beading tutorials created by Mona Cliff https://www.monacliff.com/ (Instagram @spottedcloud) passed on from her grandmother.

I learned the art of resin making from Heather artsymadwoman.