What Lies Beneath the Surface

I started this piece not really knowing what I was trying to make. I just knew I wanted to capture something I had been feeling but couldn't quite say out loud, that strange experience of looking fine on the outside while something completely different is happening inside. The sculpture ended up being a silver head rising out of a sea of waves, with a flat mirror balanced on top and a tiny flame-colored figure standing on it, arms wide open, mid-run. The waves are chaotic and the face is calm, and that tension between the two is kind of the whole point. The fire on the mirror is the part of you that's still going, still alive, even when everything around it feels like it's pulling you under.

A lot of what I was thinking about while making this connects to psychology — specifically, the way people learn to hide emotional struggle behind a composed exterior. The silver paint that covers everything, the face and the waves alike, came from thinking about how social pressure can flatten what we actually feel. We present one version of ourselves while carrying something heavier underneath, and most of the time nobody sees it. The small blue sphere hanging by a thread from the edge of the mirror was the last thing I added, and I think it's my favorite part — it's just there, suspended, unnamed. Sometimes we all have feelings that we don't have a word for yet. I wanted to leave space for that.