The Box

I struggled all of last week trying to find inspiration for this project and then had a very tough weekend. I'm coach high school girls soccer and on Saturday we had our first playoff game and my starting defender was nowhere to be found. After making multiple unanswered calls to both her and her legal guardian I was contacted 10 minutes before game time and informed that my girl overdosed on alcohol Friday night and was found at 4am that morning unconscious in the middle of the road in one of the worst parts of town in Yakima, where I live. This was going to be her first game back after recovering from a concussion and her overdose and falling and hitting her head when she passed out caused swelling in her brain and she was sedated for 16 hours. Having to visit one of my favorite kids in the hospital and seeing the girl that always comes to practice with the biggest smile on her face and a good and encouraging attitude at practice day in and day out, strapped down to a hospital bed and sedated broke my heart. I soon found out that this was her second attempt in the last month to kill herself and I couldn't believe that this kid of all people was so broken inside. She's a beautiful girl with one of the best spirits I've ever been around and I feel like most people who know this kid would see her big smile and never give a second thought to the pain behind it. I want my box to provoke discussion on mental health. I plan to have the exterior sides be very clean and potentially have a floral pattern. Something light and pretty to distract from the mess within. I was the inside of the box to gives the illusion of it splitting at the seems and I was to do some chaotic carving on the inside of the box. I want it to show an internal struggle that can easily be overlooked because of the beauty that meets the eye on the exterior.

This is work from a local artist, Bernadette Crider. She's the woman who first taught me how to throw and I love this lidded casserole form and I think her Ginko Leaf carving detail is beautiful.





These are pieces by Martha Grover and I love the bottoms of a lot of her jars and boxes because they come up around the rest of the vessel and I would like the try this technique with more of a floral quality