Before I know what I'm making

There are moments in the studio when I don’t know what I’m doing.

Not in the dramatic sense—but in the strange, suspended space where things haven’t taken shape yet, and you’re not sure how they will.

I used to hate those moments.

They made me feel like I was failing—like if I didn’t have a clear concept or outcome in mind, then I wasn’t really working. I was wasting time. Floating. Stuck.

But something has shifted.

Lately, I’ve been paying more attention to what happens in those in-between spaces.

What I feel.

What my hands reach for.

What the materials start doing on their own.

It’s not clarity, exactly.

It’s more like... presence. A kind of listening.

And it’s where most of my work begins.

Not with a plan. But with a feeling I couldn’t explain.

I remember once pressing pulp into the base of a piece without really thinking. I wasn’t planning anything. I didn’t even like the shape yet. But my hands kept moving—packing, smoothing, layering. It was quiet, but intense. Like something in me needed to keep going just to stay connected.

There was no clarity. No “vision.”Just a kind of quiet insistence.

A feeling that if I stopped, I’d lose something—not the piece, but the thread between me and whatever it was trying to say.

That’s where a lot of my work starts.

Not with certainty.

But with a small pull I’ve learned to follow.

There’s a piece I made called the Scarscape Mirror.

I wasn’t trying to make a mirror, at first. I was trying to survive a moment.

I kept building it up and scraping it back. Adding, sanding, layering again.The surface took on this strange, exposed topography—spikes, dips, edges that felt like a wound suspended in form. Not meant to heal. Just to be seen.

It reminded me of what it feels like to be exposed in a way you didn’t choose.

Even now, the mirror catches light in a way that feels a little confrontational.

Like it reflects more than just a surface.The resin sealed everything in. Not to hide it—but to reveal it more clearly.

The spikes, the dips, the uneven texture—it’s all still there, but now it catches light in a way that makes you notice what you might’ve missed. It doesn’t disguise the marks. It sharpens them.

There’s no explanation. No clear narrative.But when you stand in front of it, something shifts.

You see yourself—maybe not how you expected to, maybe not how you wanted to—but fully. With all the distortions, reflections, and truths that surface when you stop trying to appear whole.

It asks you to keep looking.

Not for answers.

But for what’s already there.

I didn’t know that was what I was making.

Not when I started. Not even halfway through.

I just knew something in me needed to take shape.And that if I let the materials guide me—if I kept listening—it might come through.

Now, when I look at that mirror, it doesn’t feel like closure.It feels like recognition.

Like a part of me I usually keep buried made it to the surface, and stayed.

Maybe that’s the real work.

Not knowing, not planning—just staying with what rises, and letting it take form.

Scarscape Mirror aeny studio 2025