Inheritance traces the quiet courage of women who refused to be limited by the labels and boundaries of their time — and what I have come to understand about myself by finding them.

Before me, there were women who refused to fit.

They were the first to go to college, the first to divorce, the ones who worked their entire lives before it was acceptable. They were not bound by what society said they should be — not in their ambitions, not in their choices, not in their desires. They simply lived, fully and without permission. Quietly. Deliberately.

Drawing from mid-century archival and family photographs — some from my own archive, others found — I layer these images with objects and clothing, bringing their stories into new life. These women spoke to me across time. I recognized them immediately — not as relics, but as the roots of who I am. Their strength was unmistakable. So was their loneliness.

.I have carried their refusal further. But this is not a story of completion. It is a system — one that moves through generations and touches everyone inside it. The women who shaped me shaped the men I have chosen and the boys I have raised. It ripples forward in ways none of us can fully trace.

That is the nature of inheritance. It is not only what we receive. It is what we cannot help but pass on — the courage, the quiet push beyond boundaries, the cost of living outside the expected. The work of these women lives in me. And through me, it continues.

It is never finished.