Echoes and Footprints is an immersive, research-based exploration of the generational impacts of heritage, culture, and tradition that shape individuals. This project seeks to understand and document the deep and often complex connection between identity and ancestry that continues to influence who I am today. As I navigate my own adulthood, I reflect on the ways in which the traditions of my upbringing have permeated my daily life through customs, stories, rituals, and food. Through this body of work, I aim to preserve and honor my Sicilian family legacy, creating a visual narrative that celebrates the symbols, memories, and practices that have left lasting impressions on my family and myself.

The collection includes a wide range of mediums - from silkscreen and oil painting to cyanotype and mixed media - intentionally diverse to mirror the layered nature of heritage itself. At the center of the work are artifacts and remnants from previous generations: heirlooms, fabrics, handwritten notes, and photographs, integrated through sewing and collage to physically bring the past into the present. While creating this body of work, I was deeply interested in how we relate to the past; both the comforting and the painful. In reflection of this duality, the series is divided into two parts: one that looks backward, exploring themes of ancestry, storytelling, and the emotional weight of legacy; and one that looks forward, considering how we navigate, preserve, and evolve cultural ties over time. Echoes and Footprints examines grief - not only for the ancestors we've lost, but for those still living who are disconnected due to painful circumstances. Memory and ritual play a crucial role in the exhibition. In particular, food emerges as a cornerstone of identity. Like many Italian American households, food in my family is an act of love and preservation. In this series, recipes function as both cultural artifacts and stories - many originating from Sicily and passed down through generations. These culinary traditions, alongside visual storytelling, form the emotional backbone of the work and nourish my ongoing connection to ancestry.

As Echoes and Footprints unfolds, it becomes clear that the preservation of heritage is not a singular act but a dynamic, ongoing process. The work invites viewers to examine their own relationships to ancestry and cultural memory. In a society increasingly shaped by displacement, assimilation, and cultural erasure, this project challenges the myth of a homogeneous American identity. It calls for respect towards the ancestral - not as nostalgia, but as an obligation. In a culture that rewards forgetting, Echoes and Footprints insists on remembering. It frames the preservation of memory, tradition, and identity as a necessary act, one that affirms the complexity and richness of lived experience. By engaging with the stories and materials of my ancestors, I reclaim a lineage often flattened or commodified by mainstream narratives. In this ongoing generational dialogue, I find both the weight of history and the potential for transformation, ensuring that the echoes of our past continue to resonate and leave their footprints on the future.