CONSCIOUSNESS

A glazed ceramic figure — armless in the tradition of ancient statuary — stands at the center of a round wooden kitchen table, stainless steel rods rising above her head holding plates whose surfaces bear photographic images of her own hands completing the tasks her missing arms cannot: combing a child’s hair, adjusting a husband’s tie, typing at a desk — while at her waist a pail of ceramic juggling balls sits alongside an alarm clock. Behind her an overturned malt glass spills a ceramic pool in which she appears as a child in a princess dress — a nostalgic glimpse of girlhood dreams held gently inside the complexity of a woman’s life. On the floor a totem of alternating plates and goblets rises beside a precarious tower of stacked plates, the topmost bearing the image of a diary — a private self resting beneath the accumulated weight of daily life. The work reflects the invisible labor of women negotiating family, career, and selfhood simultaneously, with no time to spare.