artist statement
How do old boxes become healing vessels for the telling of our deepest stories?
Boxes have clearly defined boundaries. Boundaries can be experienced as limiting, small, not free… but those very same boundaries can be a holding place, a nest, a container where things are safely held until they are needed or make sense.
This is how a box becomes a healing vessel. I call them Altars because traditionally, altars are sacred spaces where offerings are given and laid down, received. What kind of offerings? That which is offered whole-heartedly, no matter how small or ordinary, is gift.
Creating Altars is, for me, a way to tell stories. Not just any story but the deepest ones. I began to make them fifteen years ago after realizing that I had lost any connection to the deepest stories of my soul. I could pull nothing up of pleasure, memory, imagination, joy, grief; I was simply on auto-pilot, moving from one task to another.
I could not find words either, which is why objects speak to me: things found on the side of the road, at thrift stores, tag and barn sales, in long-forgotten boxes in my attic. These objects, many of which were antique or vintage, had history, had stories already. They had been used, loved, perhaps even treasured, and yet, they awaited new life.
I re-discovered the languages of metaphor and symbol and began to re-story these objects into new ones through a kind of assemblage. In shaping these Altars I began to reconnect to myself, to my human heart. Listening in this way invited new stories emerge. The boxes—old clock cases, tins, document boxes, drawers—held all of my stories in beauty and safety.
My Altars and icons are influenced by the simplicity of handmade Mexican religious shrines and other devotional craft such as Reliquaries in the Catholic tradition and Byzantine icons, though they are not meant to be religious. They are offered as tools for spiritual deepening, to be gazed on, engaged with so your deepest stories—of grief, of longing, of need, of soul exhaustion, of howling rage, of quiet, knowing peace—are welcomed, offered, laid down, received.
How do old boxes become healing vessels for the telling of our deepest stories?
Boxes have clearly defined boundaries. Boundaries can be experienced as limiting, small, not free… but those very same boundaries can be a holding place, a nest, a container where things are safely held until they are needed or make sense.
This is how a box becomes a healing vessel. I call them Altars because traditionally, altars are sacred spaces where offerings are given and laid down, received. What kind of offerings? That which is offered whole-heartedly, no matter how small or ordinary, is gift.
Creating Altars is, for me, a way to tell stories. Not just any story but the deepest ones. I began to make them fifteen years ago after realizing that I had lost any connection to the deepest stories of my soul. I could pull nothing up of pleasure, memory, imagination, joy, grief; I was simply on auto-pilot, moving from one task to another.
I could not find words either, which is why objects speak to me: things found on the side of the road, at thrift stores, tag and barn sales, in long-forgotten boxes in my attic. These objects, many of which were antique or vintage, had history, had stories already. They had been used, loved, perhaps even treasured, and yet, they awaited new life.
I re-discovered the languages of metaphor and symbol and began to re-story these objects into new ones through a kind of assemblage. In shaping these Altars I began to reconnect to myself, to my human heart. Listening in this way invited new stories emerge. The boxes—old clock cases, tins, document boxes, drawers—held all of my stories in beauty and safety.
My Altars and icons are influenced by the simplicity of handmade Mexican religious shrines and other devotional craft such as Reliquaries in the Catholic tradition and Byzantine icons, though they are not meant to be religious. They are offered as tools for spiritual deepening, to be gazed on, engaged with so your deepest stories—of grief, of longing, of need, of soul exhaustion, of howling rage, of quiet, knowing peace—are welcomed, offered, laid down, received.