Faylinda Kodis grew up in Maine and returned to the state in 2023 after years abroad teaching, traveling, and working across cultures. That homecoming reshaped her practice, turning her attention toward memory, belonging, and close observation of daily life. A two-time Fulbright recipient to Japan, she draws on those travels to build layered still life compositions that move between observation and imagination. Her ongoing series, Still Life Journeys, gathers mementos, souvenirs, flowers, and small bird sculptures into visual records of memory and place. Working in watercolor, gouache, and collage, Kodis builds her surfaces through layering, sanding, cutting, and lifting paint from the paper. Vintage U.S. Geological Survey maps, collected during her studies at the University of Southern Maine, have become a signature element, serving as borders, frames, and symbols of navigation and belonging. Rather than static arrangements, her compositions behave like emotional landscapes, inviting viewers to consider how personal histories are assembled from fragments, rituals, and remembered places.