Kristi Yapp
Artist’s Biography 2025
Kristi Yapp is a mother, chicken farmer, fiber artist and writer living in Rensselaer, Indiana. Until 2022, Kristi was a preschool teacher for thirty years in Cook County, Illinois. On June 5, 2022, at the height of the pandemic, Kristi’s mom suddenly became terminally ill with three distinct forms of cancer. Kristi quit her job to become her mom’s full-time ca
regiver. On September 21, 2022, Kristi’s oldest son died of an overdose, in San Francisco, California. He was one of one-hundred-thousand young Americans murdered by fentanyl in that year. On December 12, 2022, after a bold and fearless battle with an incredibly aggressive and painful disease, Kristi’s mom was granted the mercy of a peaceful death in her own bedroom, in the house which she had blessed with her presence for the previous four decades. On June 5, 2023, in a state of profound grief, Kristi unknowingly began a project, which continues today. On that day, she wrote a paragraph on Facebook. It began: “On this day last year, my mom was healthy.”
Kristi then, using memories, photos, medical records, text messages and journal entries, wrote the daily events, thoughts and emotions that had experienced on each. She wrote her stories daily until December 12, 2023. Each entry began with the words: “On this day, last year…
In 2024, Kristi began rewriting her story, day by day, on Substack. Once the entries were complete, she and her husband, a retired English professor, began to edit and revise the pages, turning them into a book. Kristi found that she still needed to express her sorrow at the brutal loss of her mother and her son, and at the lack of compassion and empathy that she found when attempting to navigate through the American Medical System. Having become a professional fiber artist since her mother’s death, Kristi began to make wet-felted and needle-felted wool compositions featuring the image of the broken heart. Each of the hearts represents one daily story from the time of her mom’s turbo cancer. Once complete, she takes a photo of each of the hearts and posts it on her Substack page along with its accompanying story. When the project is complete there will be one-hundred-eighty-four wool hearts that will stand as a tribute to those who have died during the covid years and to those who are left grieving. [email protected]
