I examine my battles with mental illness, as I struggle with my past bubbling up from the baseboards of my mind. My concepts root themselves in adolescent experiences relating to death, illness, religion, sex, shame, and in the act of compartmentalization. While providing a framework for analyzing self-stigma, my work explores what happens to the parts of myself I bury away via metaphors themed in natural phenomenons. My upbringing in the Catholic church gave me a foundation for using storytelling to explain why things are the way they are, but after splitting with the institution I found solace in the stories told about the natural world. I hope to reclaim my past, my present, and future without shame and self-hatred.

My chosen mediums include, but are not limited to, ceramic, woodworking, watercolor, and poetry. I draw inspiration from cabinets of curiosity or Kunstkammer, but by exposing the darkest parts myself as the oddities in store, I oppose the idea of the cabinet being an item to uphold social rank or status. Often thinking about the act of compartmentalization, I find myself categorizing life into metaphorical containers. Through this, I question what happens when containers go missing or get broken and how we, as humans, react to the essential elements of the human condition such as mental health, unexpected change, and trauma. The process of making physical vessels allows me to safely explore the invisible scars that are left in place when metaphorical containers go missing. I compare the repetitive motions of craft making to those of using a rosary. While my body stays on auto-pilot, my mind is free to explore territories that would otherwise be untouchable. By tucking my finished jars into a cabinet, they are stored in a body that is a placeholder for my own.