Not many people know that I first started in ceramics. While getting my degree I suffered greatly from depression and self sabotage. I was the type of person to start something and never finish before moving to the next thing. Often many of my ideas never made it past being written on a piece of paper. My relationships were scattered and I often lost touch with people. I honestly didn’t even know what it felt like to have true friends at that time. I was emotionally, mentally and physically bankrupt from distress, distraction, and poor boundaries. I had no examples of what it looked like for someone like me to do things differently. I had no sense of myself different from what I was.

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When I made this work, I had just started a journey of meditation and Buddhist principles. Each piece was a meditative session in repetition and completion. Similar to taking a seat and allowing space for our brains to process, I would allow the clay to take whatever pinched or pressed shape it desired. The end of a piece came just as organically with no deadline or rush to finish.

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In essence I was teaching myself what it looked like to take the “best next step” and allowing myself the ease and joy of letting that process unfold however it must.

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I feel like we don’t have much of this in our lives. Not many places to practice unfolding our minds, letting things flow, and letting a new aspect of ourselves emerge.

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Art is unique in that way. It has all the space you need and all the tools to dig deep into yourself but you have to make the time to do it, and you have to let go of restrictions. And the last thing, the secret sauce of sorts, is you have to believe you can make something you’ve never made before!

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#motivationaltuesday #meditativeart #sculptureoftheday #atlartist #meditationpractice #arttherapy #art