During a recent conversation about her upcoming show Wormhole Animism at Capitol Hill’s Steve Gilbert Studio, Meghan Thréinfhir (née Meghan Elizabeth Trainor) takes us on a brief journey from her nascent influences in spiritual tradition to her current work that takes inspiration from the poetic nature of physics in the universe.

Thréinfhir’s work has always had spiritual connections. With a practice firmly rooted in her own ancestral Irish Catholic imagery and iconography in her early art-making days, she found new inspiration via Mexican folk art when she was exposed to the work of Frida Kahlo and later from a nearby shop when she worked at Pike Place Market in the 1990s. Importantly, a 1980s show at Seattle Art Museum about African spiritual objects left a significant impression.