Money has only ever flowed backwards for us--- There have never been family diamonds, or gold necklaces hidden away in a keepsake box somewhere; no money locked away for a rainy day. When rainy days come, we learn to like it. We learn to pull weeds when the earth is soft, plant seeds just before. We learn this is when the shiniest rocks float to the surface.

When the Great Depression hit, my great-grandmother was 12 years old. When there was absolutely no money, she learned the value of even the simplest of things---a sibling, a hot meal, the beauty of a rock found in a ditch somewhere, of being with loved ones while finding it. It has only ever been this way. Every summer, Grammy and I go rock hunting. The highlight of our year. We walk and talk about everything---train our eyes to look for for light glimmering in the washes, take only the few that speak to us. We get home and she puts them on the shelf with the others, each pebble, a memory.

This work, called “where we go to ground ourselves” is a wearable memento to my matriline, paying homage to the lessons I have been taught from generations of financial hardship---of valuing the beauty of the earth, of how walking alone and together is grief’s best medicine, and the power of looking for small beauties in a big hard world. Traditionally used for diamond-setting, I have used prong-setting for monetarily worthless pebbles found throughout my life, to be literally and figuratively captured and passed on. The asymmetry calls towards the beauty of chaos and is a wearable reminder of this, an heirloom for the future.