“You’re doing your best. No one is mad at you” is a direct response to an exercise from my therapist where you leave notes to yourself to challenge cognitive distortions (when my brain lies to me). I found the idea of these notes ugly and embarrassing, so I reimagined something I perceived as ugly by reinventing into something beautiful. My relationship with my mental health is often something I feel shameful about, however when someone sees the feeling that I am putting on display and responds with a sense of camaraderie it validates both of our experiences. No one is ever feeling something alone.

“If pain exists in my brain why can I feel it in my chest?”

The Past Haunts the Present is a piece about the permanence of the past. Cameo engraving is a process that removes lighter colored glass (traditionally white) to reveal dark colors; it uses specific mark making through the removal of material in order to create an image. People are like engraving in that once something has been done to a person it is permanent. There may be tricks that make marks hidden, but no matter what, the mark happened. Mistakes are covered. Holes are attempted to be filled. Wishes are made. Each of us longing to be able to go back to a time before.

self-mending material consists of eight cameo engraved fused glass panels. Cameo engraving is a process that removes lighter colored glass (traditionally white) to reveal dark transparent colors; it uses specific mark making through the removal of material in order to create an image. Scarring results from a similar removal of material that could be considered a form of unintentional mark making affecting both the body and the mind. Both cameo engraving and scarring may have different intentions, but both leave marks that cannot be undone. These marks can then be brought together to tell stories about the object or person that they belong to. Self-mending Material reveals what processing these wounds can be like, and how connections are made between the body and mind.

Historically, colored glass windows are present in churches allowing sunlight to reveal a story, and creating a space that connects the metaphysical to the material world. This simple use of light and glass merges these two facets of our identity, and allows the magnitude of the spiritual to become concrete. In self-mending material the hands reflect the human body and the light through the light through the glass shows the abstractness of the human mind. The connection between the two planes is almost forced by the sets of stitches throughout the panels. These stitches show how the body and mind tell each other “we will heal together.”

This piece was made as a study at the Corning Museum of Glass in 2018.

healing consists of two charcoal drawings that have had molten glass dripped onto them to create marks. These marks are meant to reflect scarring and how a person with physical scars cannot control where those marks are made on their body. This is a high contrast to the very intentional mark making in the drawing that was used to create an image. These drawings are then stitched together with waxed thread.

hold yourself together is a piece that comes from a person's relationship with their body in times of trauma. Once a part of a person is removed they must continue on as a different human being.

The stitch is something that is used to bring two things together, and after the separation of skin sutures are something that are used to make the two edges of a wound one. This form of repair forces two things together that causes a ridge of scarring to form. This scarring is a line of the skin that physical trauma has drawn, which has left a permanent scar on their skin forever.

Once something happens to a person there is no way to go back. Working with glass is similar in that once part of the glass is removed, there is no true way to repair it.  This piece consists of sheet glass made in the hotshop that has then been diamond wheel engraved in a way that removes parts of the top layer of color in order to create an image within the glass itself.  With engraving the removal of material creates something new, which resonates deeply with how a person’s identity is formed. Once something has happened to us we can never go back.

This work can now be viewed at Kuhn Honors and Scholars Center at The Ohio State University

Cameo engraved amber over opaline glass.

Made at the Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass in 2018