Burden Bowls

“Burden Bowls” is about how we carry emotional burdens. Do we need to reshape ourselves to contain the burdens we deem necessary to bear? Can we use a different vessel to release them? About 10 years ago I was struggling and found myself making bowls. They were like vessels for me to empty my burdens into. It became my personal ritual. I began to see that I was the actual bowl—I was the object containing the burden. Except I realized that this vessel was being reshaped by what it was containing.

Friends came to hang out with me in my studio and comfort me. I wondered if my friends, too, could use bowls to hold their burdens, if I could offer them a way to offload the life-distorting weight of their struggles and regain agency in the shapes of their lives.

I made more bowls and handed them out, inviting people to use the bowls in whatever way relieved their burden(s). I asked that the bowls be returned to me with some documentation of the user's time with the bowl. This body of work shares with the viewer this process--the bowls I made and the documentation of what people did with them.

Burden Bowls

Burden Bowls is about how we carry emotional burdens. Do we need to reshape ourselves to contain the burdens we deem necessary to bear? Can we use a different vessel to release them? About 10 years ago I was struggling and found myself making bowls. They were vessels for me to empty my burdens into. It became my personal ritual. I began to see that I was the actual bowl — I was the object containing the burden. Except I realized that this vessel was being reshaped by what it was containing.

I made more bowls and handed them out, inviting people to use the bowls in whatever way relieved their burdens. I asked that the bowls be returned to me with some documentation of the user's time with the bowl. This body of work shares with the viewer this process — the bowls I made and the documentation of what people did with them.