Poppy DeltaDawn

Lives and works in Lawrence, KS, USA

Artist statement

When I was a young girl, I dug my mother’s crochet hook and yarn out of a storage container in the basement. I brought it upstairs and pleaded with her to show me how to use the hooked metal rod. She showed how to use the tool to make long looped chains. Soon after, she regrets this. I spend the next few days walking around the house with a long acrylic daisy-chain trailing everywhere I go. She won’t teach me how to attach to chain to itself to make form. Later that week, we go to my grandmother’s house. I want to know if she will be excited about it like I am She tells me that I need to leave my new skill in the car. My mom lets me know that this is not for boys and that I need to keep it in the car. I am a woman of transgender experience. Despite my best efforts to forget this fact and continue my life’s work, my country’s government continues to remind me, shame me, erase me, and demonize me for this beautiful gift of life that I have been handed, and for finding my truth. My gender difference is a blessing because it let me survive. My work is not about my gender identity. My work is a joyful expression of culture and spirit. My work is a critique on the human technology that broke the prairie and colonized this land. It connects my spirituality, my body, and my culture together to create meaning and critical analyses of the world we live in. The meaning of the material evolves as time passes, and the work is always alive and in transition, just like people. Through my...

Artwork