What does a 5 month art project look like?
Sharing the completion of my newest piece: "At the Heart of Grief"
What does a 5 month art project look like?
Well, I can tell you for certain, I didn’t know how this would end up when I got the first spark of inspiration 5 months ago. Since this artwork is really two projects in one, allow me to point you to the post that includes tons of behind the scenes photos and details as I was about halfway through creating this piece.
If you’ve followed along on the project, you know that dimensional, anatomical heart in anguish was just the beginning of something spectacular, and I’m so excited to share the final piece—in its entirety—with you.
This piece is crafted to feel like a surgical confession—intimate, exposed, raw… and honest.
At the Heart of Grief is an excavation of emotional wounding. Starting at the center of it all, an anatomical heart, handcrafted and tightly bound in metal chains, is squeezed until it bleeds. A visceral expression of a heart trapped in anguish. Stuck in the pain that never had an exit. The pain that simply compounded wound after wound and continued to tighten its grip on a tender heart.
The blood is rendered in intricate beadwork. It’s a deliberate tension: how we dress our wounds in beauty, even as they pulse beneath the surface. This is the only way I knew how to live for the longest time.
The heart floats inside a custom display box, lined in dark red velvet—womb-like, yet displayed like an ethereal gem still alive in spite of it all. The box is completely covered by a man’s light blue collared shirt, split open with surgical clamps and beads encrusting its opening like a crystallized rupture. The shirt is sewn as if suctioned to the box’s frame and pulled inward by unprocessed sorrow. That shirt is a symbol of masculine armor. It’s not just fabric—it’s fascia, memory, and represents the years I spent moving through the world with protection over tenderness, function over feeling.
Just as grief is not linear, the elements I’ve chosen to include in the piece do not tell a chronological story. Many features became an act of remembering. For example, a hidden, hand-stitched heart within the larger form holds the fur of my beloved pet rabbit—a soft relic buried inside as a secret reliquary to honor what we carry long after loss.
Grief is dynamic, multifaceted and sacred. Not meant to be feared, but rather to be revered as the most human of our experiences.
Until next time, my friend. Create bravely and keep betting on yourself.
P.S. If you’d like to see more of my art and peek into my creative life, come follow me on Instagram. 🌹
It’s dynamic! I can feel the tender breaking ,pushing through the masculine veneer, fighting to be heard.