In the winter of 2022, while on Artist Fellowship expanding my body of work as an eggshell sculptor, a dark shadow sat down beside me and would not go away. It was just a vague smudge of a figure, mutely and menacingly following me everywhere. I tried to describe him to others, but no one else could see him. Early one rainy dawn I spotted him hunkered down in a trashcan, all in a jumbled heap of black scribble. Feeling bad, I carried him to my studio and spent the next month helping him shape up, in hopes he might eventually go away. But he was a Vast Depression, and once I saw him clearly, he started talking.  He hasn't stopped since.

 

I was a 54 year-old woman, minding my own business, serenely carving delicate little eggshells; suddenly I'm "Embracing Childhood" by making full-sized barbed-wire playground swings.

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Throughout life, any form of art was my escape --- a safe and therapeutic space; but an actual "Artist" was someone who had a recognizable style and/or something important to say. Right? I was just the lady who made cool and pretty things (mostly for her own sanity, or cheap gift-giving). I didn't think the story I had to tell was anything anyone wanted to hear...

Until...

 

...the joy of my fellowship fell prey to severe depression, and my minutely detailed, miniature artwork was abruptly (& helplessly) as abandoned as my inner child had long-since been. My work swiftly took on an entirely new scale and scope becoming, instead, a visual exploration of trauma.  Now I'm "Embracing Childhood" fully.

 

Reclaiming found materials around me and creating full-sized sculptures in order to reclaim my personal history opened a floodgate of introspection which soon revealed itself to be an all-too-recognizable condition shared by far too many, and the tale being told is a timeless fable of life beyond trauma.