Work

Holding

Holding explores how we hold ourselves together, and how we are held by the world around us.

Some changes begin within us. Others arrive through circumstances, relationships and forces we cannot control. Over time, what we carry and what carries us become part of who we are.

In these sculptures, a familiar vessel becomes a body working through those encounters. Some forms open from within. Others bend beneath an outside weight or rest in a delicate support. Rawhide draws separated edges together. Iron holds, presses or interrupts. What sustains a form may also constrain it.

The found materials bring histories of their own. Discarded tools and weathered metal enter new relationships with the clay, sometimes carrying it, sometimes changing its shape. Their earlier lives remain present in what they become.

I’m interested in how we live with what has happened to us. How we adapt, what we come to depend on, and what remains unsettled. Holding together can mean finding a way to live with tension that does not go away.