I started making these felted bird eyes almost by accident, to satisfy my yearning to touch the birds themselves.

I started looking at birds at the very end of a year of personal losses. It felt, at the time, as if they suddenly materialized in response to my attention and my need for comfort. I longed to hold them - but our error has always been in trying to own what we think we have discovered.

Instead, I make these textural intermediary objects. I use my own photos as a guide, enlarging the eyes and printing them onto felt, and then recreating them in colored wool, using traditional needle felting, a method that allows me to essentially paint with fiber.

Each one of the pieces is the eye of a bird I have met.