Process & Purpose
This piece was created for my family genogram in Theory & Practice of Family Art Therapy during Winter 2023. The process of creating this took about a month and a half. I was reflecting on my work from It Didn’t Start With You and wanting to create a container for my brothers and I to tell our story. With each vessel I would focus on a different member of my family while I was throwing clay. I would mend and adjust the vessels to reflect their energy. The process was filled with metaphor connecting the experience of making to the narrative of my family. The container/altar structure breaking when being fired and mended together with gold leaf representative of my parents divorce. It also symbolizing my brothers and I trying to piece together our foundation of safety and security post separation. The main purpose of this piece was to tell the story of our grief, exploring the secrecy and trauma behind one of my siblings death. His vessel represented at the bottom carved in and broken and spilling out of him these little gems or secrets with a trail leading up to my parents who spoke little about his loss and its effects on their separation. The entire piece serves as a honoring of our story, a story that has not been told. A space for us to have a voice and process the loss of a sibling, and a loss of a solid foundation of family.