I began creating these in the winter but they didn’t come together until the spring. I started casting the molds and individual pieces and was playing around with how I’d like to use them. But in late March I found out my father was at the end stages of his life and in hospice care. I grieved alone and from afar as travelling was not easy for a myriad of reasons. It was a really difficult and dark time for me.
Then as my head was just beginning to poke above water I returned to my studio and the pieces started to come together in this arrangement. In a few weeks I’d be participating in the spring @darksomecraftmkt that I’d applied to months before, I needed to get back on my feet and have something ready for market, but life pummelled yet again. Just 3 weeks after my father passed (and the day before my 40th birthday) we were informed that my husband, who had undergone emergency open heart surgery last summer had to have open heart surgery AGAIN and now. A week before market we were sat in a hospital room being told he may not make it off the table the next day. But he came through (he’s doing great!) and I had 3 days to have something ready Darksome. I finished off 3 prototypes of my 𝕺𝖚𝖗 𝕯𝖆𝖗𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖌 plaques and decided to offer preorders of ten in each colour option thinking it’d be a manageable way to work through the first couple months of my husbands convalescence. I had no idea they’d be so well received and sold out quickly. Unfortunately I didn’t realize what a mental toll these two traumas had on me. My motivation, organizational skills were both nonexistent and my clumsiness level when way up. Y’all, I messed so many up. Dumb mistakes because my head was full of sadness and worry. So much wasted material. None of them were perfect, each one all I could see were the glaring imperfections. I kept casting new ones hoping I’d get better results and I’d mess up something minor in each and every one.
These plaques became and embodiment of my sorrow. I still love them and think they’re beautiful, I just didn’t expect them to get so tangled in my emotions. Since completing my orders I hadn’t had the heart to return to creating them. But instead I worked at tweaking how I made them and how to make them easier to create, and reduce room for errors. I still haven’t cast a perfect plaque. (Once I do, I’m getting a mold of that one immediately!) But it’s good to come to terms with things at least getting finished, even if they’re not perfect.
🖤