About this piece

2020 was a year of intense contraction for me. Despite having experienced some undeniably beautiful moments in the midst of the chaos, I couldn't maintain a state of gratitude and I'd lost all interest in making art (and in most other things that used to give me joy). Pervasive feelings of diminishment, loneliness, anxiety, alienation and shame had me almost immobile at times, and a dense existential feeling of unworthiness set in. While I understood intellectually that the only way to move though this darkness was to sit with it and give it my full loving attention, I was too deep in a cycle of negative self-talk to be present for even the moment it would have taken to shift it. I dove head first into any distraction that would offer me temporary relief, but this unconscious and reactive behavior only solidified my certainty that I'd regressed somehow. 

I say all this because sometimes we think "healing" is a linear path towards some destination. But the truth is that it is a continuous cycle of expansion and contraction, of death and rebirth. We may think a forest fire is a terrible thing, but there are certain seeds that only germinate when exposed to intense heat. To thrive, these seeds actually need to get burned: fire is required to crack their hard kernels so that water can leak in and begin the growth process. Positive and negative exist only in our egos and in our limited understanding of what we are doing here on this planet. You never know what's really going on inside someone or where they are in this process, you can only trust that they, like you, are on their unique path and meet them with compassion.

This piece represents acceptance of all states of being. If you stand in front of it, fragments of you are literally reflected back in the mirrored surface. The parts you like and show to the world and the parts you'd rather keep hidden from view (and maybe aren't even aware of) are all integral parts of the totality of you. And you are so much more than the sum of your parts.