Healing Hearts Accordion Book

I have long been drawn to books. Since childhood they have represented a fantastic escape, a way for me to revise the parts of my life I chose to bury or repress. Books, like any art, function as a sort of container. In the art studio, witnessing clients as they descended into the transformative depths of grief, it was my responsibility to create a therapeutic container to hold their stories. Story by story, memory by memory, dream by dream, clients bravely gave themselves over to grief. I started journaling and creating altered books as a form of self-care during my internship, creating the same therapeutic container for myself that I sought to offer my clients in the art studio. But as I sat to write this statement I realized that I was not taking the next step. I was making this art and writing it off as self-care so I wouldn't be forced to engage in the same shadow-work I beheld my clients bravely doing on a daily basis.

The last piece I created was an accordion book of illustrations depicting a young girl repairing and creating her heart. Repair or creation entails that her heart was somehow broken, lost, or missing. My clients suffered from similar heartache, a fruitless yearning to fill a void with something or someone they could no longer physically grasp. This void never goes away, but it does change shape. Sitting in the ambiguous between-space of grief, unsure of everything they held such faith in, clients started to rebuild their hearts. At times the profound resiliency of my clients would leave me breathless. As I made these pieces my breath returned; I was grounded by creating something in the midst of so much loss. But until now I didn’t understand that within every act of creation there also lies loss. With even the happiest of transitions there is mourning for moving past what once was. I cannot definitively offer you the meaning of these pieces because I am still sitting with not knowing, ambiguity, and fear. What my clients have taught me is that it is okay to take my time in this space, for it is a space filled with potential - a space of rest, restoration, and reclamation.

^ This is my favorite :)

Lose Control: Mixed Media

Transform a dull wooden box into something special. I was inspired to do this by my friend Chelsea, who has been a continual source of creative nourishment.

Collaging/mixed media is especially hard for me since I have an ongoing need to control. I find that little projects like this help challenge my controlling nature and open me up to the beauty of mistakes and mess.

Altered Addictions: Buried Shadow

This installation represents my evolving relationship with my personal shadow, as embodied by the symbol of altered cigarette boxes. I sought to manipulate materials in the same way that my addiction has manipulated me. I have been pushed around, isolated, and weakened by my addiction. Primary metaphors inherent in materials informed me of the roots and current dimensions of my dependency. The rhythmic process of hand sewing - wrapping, pulling, burning, tugging, and knotting – was a means to re-author and re-contextualize self-harm into self-care. Each box is characterized by a theme underlying the many facets of my addiction. Among these themes are perfectionism, attachment, grief-work, and body-image. The boxes nesting within the organic ground of roots and dirt represent a revision of the attachment relationship I sought through my addiction to cigarettes. This revised attachment is nourishing rather than maladaptive. The earthy base offers the shelter and security necessary for these symbols of my shadow to thrive and evolve. Through externalizing and objectifying these shadow fragments I have begun to slowly integrate disowned self-aspects towards integration and psychic healing.