My work explores the dynamic of human childbirth as a spectacle. Having seen my sisters ready their bodies for birth, I have recently realized that the process fascinates me. Insofar as an exploration into understanding my own beginning I look again at the brutal magnificence with which we each are brought into this world. I seek to investigate the relationship between the birthing mother, the vaginal area, and any potential viewer. There seems to be a stigma to certain private matters such as childbirth. When thinking about birth some think only of the screaming and pain, and are flooded with a range of emotions like empathy, disgust, fear, compassion, and awe. Yet, there is so much more that takes place. Outsiders can only imagine the physical and emotional strain on participants in the birth.

I seek to demystify birth by creating figures, which play out different parts of the birthing sequence. For example, my Crowning series places the baby’s emerging head as the focal point, while acknowledging the hip, thigh and stomach muscles that make the event possible. By focusing on the separate actions I deconstruct the system we think we all know. The three main elements of my work are raw unfired clay, abstracted figures, and the process of birth. Each sculpture begins wet and malleable resembling at first the supple, changing pregnant body. As the exhibition runs its course they dry and crack as metaphor for the pain of the contracting bones and muscles as well as of mental stress. Using unfired clay brings to bear an ephemeral state of mind. The works are meant to last only for a short period of time. Much like the experience of viewing an actual birth, one's own recollection of the event is distorted with each retelling, as such with each time I sculpt. The experience is ever changing and transitory.