Mira Mariah’s use of THE LINE blooms from her relationship with thread. Her sewing and tattoo practice are connected in process– manipulating a needle to create shape, imagery, and connection across fiber and/or skin. Mariah utilizes the line to contextualize the visual field, creating boundaries and connections through her mediation of the mark and negative space. Her use of the line produces figures with intimate relationships and distinct expressions.  The emotive characters of Knew York are not contained by Mariah’s line, but realized through its intentionality. 

“A line offers me the clearest way to send a message.” It can conjure text and imagery, providing a visual clarity, “not to seal the point, but to invite the evolution of a point.”  Mariah’s approach to the line is inspired by the highly conscious use of  lines throughout early-twentieth-century American tattoo, while aesthetically reimagining it to express the images relevant to her world. 

Her practice is rooted in the continuous line, yet is not restricted or empowered by rule. She will pick up her instrument as often as needed:

“It is more comparable to writing in script, the line breaks when a sentence ends in the image; however, my style is less like script and more like writing in all caps, a more forward delivery of a message.”