What Holds Me

People ask me about the containers. The clear plastic organizers meant for gift wrap. The glass jars with metal lids lined up like specimens. The comforter bags stuffed with fragments of my former work.

Why plastic and glass? Why not frames, pedestals, traditional gallery walls?

Because these aren't storage solutions. They're presentation methods. New ways to hold and show art that refuses to be flat, refuses to stay still, refuses to pretend it was never broken.

Because I need to know what I've saved, even when I can't see all of it. Most of what's in the jars and containers is hidden behind other pieces. Layers upon layers of fragments pressed against the glass, some visible, most not. But that's part of the point.

When I moved my cut-up history into clear containers, something shifted. The chaos became curated. The destruction became intentional. The fragments stopped feeling like evidence of failure and started feeling like finished work in new forms.

Untitled

These containers don't just hold the pieces—they complete them. A jar full of colorful fragments isn't waiting to become something else. It is something else. The container becomes part of the artwork, the presentation method becomes the meaning.

Glass jars turn scraps into specimens, but they also look like candy jars. Rows of colorful fragments arranged like treats in an old-fashioned candy store. This isn't lost on me—someone who has spent years struggling with an eating disorder, who understands the complicated relationship between desire and restriction, abundance and control.

My fragments sit behind glass like expensive chocolates, like specimens awaiting study. Both precious and dangerous. Both irresistible and requiring careful consideration.

The art pieces aren't the only things I've put in jars. All of my jewelry lives in glass containers now—expensive pieces mixed with costume jewelry. A jar holds my dad's military patches, metals, and hats—memories made tangible, grief given form. Another contains spiritual items I've collected over the years. A small jar preserves my hair from when I first buzzed it off in a performance—the moment I swore I wouldn't grow it out until standards of beauty changed and people weren't defined by their physical attributes.

Losing Weight

The gift wrap organizers hold strips of painted canvas like colorful ribbons. But there are other ones too—holding report cards, photos, negatives, old school papers. Each container keeps its own category, but they sit together, part of the same system.

Everything that matters gets the same treatment. The jar doesn't distinguish between a diamond ring and a paper fragment, between my father's service medals and strands of my own hair. Value gets redefined by proximity, by the democracy of glass containment.

There's something about transparency that matters, even when most of what's inside stays hidden. I spent too many years hiding things—my body, my struggles, my work that didn't meet my own impossible standards. Clear containers refuse complete hiding. They offer glimpses.

Frames create distance. They say look but don't touch, appreciate but don't interact. My containers invite different kinds of looking. They can be moved, rearranged, opened if needed. The art stays accessible, touchable, real.

Picture Perfect

Maybe this is why plastic and glass feel right. They're both transformations of raw materials—sand into something clear and strong, petroleum into something flexible and useful. They understand that becoming something new doesn't mean losing what you were.

But there's something else. These containers hold me as much as they hold my work. When everything feels scattered—my body, my thoughts, my sense of who I am—the jars and organizers become anchors. They say: this matters, this stays, this gets tended to with care.

What holds me isn't just the physical containers. It's the ritual of sorting, the meditation of placing fragments where they belong, the daily choice to treat my broken pieces as precious enough to preserve.

People see my presentation system and think unconventional. I see evolution. Each jar, each clear container redefines what art can be, how it can be held, how it can be experienced.

The fragments don't wait patiently for their next incarnation. They are their next incarnation. Contained but visible. Complete but ready for new contexts. Protected enough to survive, clear enough to be seen, finished enough to matter exactly as they are.

Self Portrait as Christmas