Sometimes I Think About Ending Things (with you) (2020) clay, glaze, chain, and wire

I often put my weaknesses on display in my work, sometimes because I want people to accept me for who I am, other times because I hope someone secretly feels the same way I do. I try to depict my personal contradictions in my work, which in this case is fight or flight. Conflict is an inherent component of animal behavior. These sculptures, part bird, part human, part truth, part reality-bending anxiety, represent the tension in fight or flight scenarios, often intensified by my sometimes-skewed perception of reality. In my personal relationships, I can be hyperaware of the subtleties in human communication, often accompanied by sirens telling me that things can often be threats coated in sweetness. I remind myself that we all get hurt. Here, both figures are in pain but cannot leave, tethered to one another, as I often feel. Maybe there is a comfort in being attached, or maybe it’s fear.