‘Your pain is trivial insofar as you can use it to connect with others.’
~James Baldwin 1969
Growing up ‘different’ in Georgia in the ‘80’s cultivated in me a belief that I am too different and broken to be understood or loved.
When I began sculpting wire portraits - I found in the contours of my models' faces the same pain, fear, desire, and hope that I had experienced. This discovery challenged my limited and long-held beliefs about pain.
Through a creative practice based in empathy, I’ve learned to create prism-like wire portraits that cast an infinite number of shadows. And I’ve grown to love the magical rebelliousness of wire - the most innocuous item found in the back of every junk drawer – and to love the process of transforming it into objects capable of deeply moving others.
In each sculpture and in the myriad shadows it creates, I place all the depth of feeling and the shifting of moods that this empathic practice allows me to discover in others. Through this practice the pain I feel is no longer marked as trivial. I leave my studio each day with a deep sense of our collective humanity, and with a profound feeling of optimism.
By humanizing this medium so easily discarded, I heal the parts of myself that were thrust in the back of a drawer to be forgotten.