Show Me The Way And I’ll Go There: Sculptural Explorations
Chinatown Soup, New York, November 2022

Each sculpture in this series is a small altar. More than thirty-six objects and twenty-two small heads, each with a third eye, were made by hand. The metalworks were carved in wax, then cast in bronze and silver and patinated with fire.

They were arranged on a dragon tetrahedron crystal grid. Visitors were invited to leave offerings: fruit, candles, messages. The oak shrine was built as a hexagon; kyanite was placed on each side, surrounding the all-seeing Dragon’s Eye incense burner. The mirror triangle on which everything rests is the grid’s foundation.

Metal is the teacher here. It is malleable, strong, and under heat and pressure it changes, as we do. Diamond, set into the third eye of each head, holds the same lesson. Shaped by my Reiki practice, the work sees the body as a vessel also, a conduit for energies larger than ourselves, a shrine to guides, ancestors, mothers, and love. Altar, alter: a place to acknowledge change, beginning with ourselves.

Show Me The Way And I’ll Go There is an invitation to leave something at the altar (an intention, a dream, a wound) and allow it to transmute.

Ceremonial Vessels

Each piece was hand-shaped in gilded metal, copper, bronze, brass, and steel through planishing, raising, and chasing, alongside wood lathe work and carving. Surfaces were patinated with fire and borax, and some were made using mokume-gane, the Japanese art of folding and layering metal.

The work engages the senses: the sight of fire-colored metal, the weight and texture in the hand, the scent of incense and warmed oils, and sound. The vessels ring, and the bells chime.

Some vessels were made to burn essential oils for fragrance, with abacus-style sliding beads and small spoons for lifting out the warmed oil for use in self-care. The cabinet works, inspired by medicinal containers, store powdered incense. Each is a small apothecary for ritual, where scent is kept, opened, and released.