We Believed Fairies Shared This Home With Us

These three works mark three distinct times in my life when I was reflecting on the meaning of home. Here are their stories.

When I was younger, I loved to build fairy houses at the base of a tree in my backyard, using flowers, leaves, and anything else I could find to make the space inviting for magical visitors. Years passed and I mostly forgot about these fairy houses, until a class at Smith prompted me to create art out of natural materials to mark a moment in time, and all those memories came rushing back. I wanted to bring myself back to those moments of quiet joy and connection with the natural world and its magic, but it is quite a different experience to build a fairy house as a near-adult behind your college dorm in the dead of winter than it is to build one as a child in your own backyard at the height of summer. I found myself feeling more melancholy than joyful, because I realized my sense of home had entirely shifted, and I now felt more at home at Smith, and very distant from the child who believed in fairies. As I sat there in the cold, I found it harder to believe that fairies would ever show up, and saw that as proof that my childhood was really over. “We Believed Fairies Shared This Home With Us” (2020) became a series of drawings and photographs that prompted reflection on what it means to build a home, the way home can become a time and not a place, and the feelings of fear that can arise when your sense of home is lost or changed.

Shortly after creating this piece, the pandemic did exactly that, shattering the sense of home and community I felt at Smith and ultimately sending me back to my childhood home, where I found myself feeling even more lost.