Mending, three hand-carved encaustic bowls with residual shavings and golden repairs, 7.5" diameter × 3" height each.

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Mending

With these bowls, I embrace the Japanese practice of kintsukuroi, an art of repair that understands breakage not as failure, but as an essential part of an object’s history. Rather than disguising damage, restoration with metallic lacquer deliberately highlights fractures, elevating them as sites of transformation. Through this process, the altered ceramic acquires new visual, material, and emotional significance. Often, the repaired object holds greater value and resonance than it did before it was broken.

Engaging with these mended forms invites a quiet recognition of shared experiences—defect, aging, fragility, and imperfection. There is something profoundly moving in this acknowledgment, and I find the practice’s reverence for perceived weakness both liberating and empowering. The labor-intensive cycle of hand-carving each bowl, breaking it, and repairing it—again and again as cracks compound—mirrors the difficulty and repetitious nature of deep healing. Gold mending becomes a visual metaphor for repair itself, illustrating not only survival, but worth. Through this work, I hope to honor the beauty inherent in healing and to affirm the value of care, patience, and self-investment. By making this reparative process visible, I aim to empower those who carry wounds, while celebrating the quiet strength required to continue along this challenging and beautiful journey.