I released my last collection in May of 2023. Two years later, I’m proud to share a new series: The Bell Jar Collection.
What really took me so long to finish these was my own mental unrest.
The upheaval of moving my family to a new state in the fall of 2023 left me extremely depressed and incapable of creating new work. Art has always been medicine to me (along with a lot of real prescription drugs). But if you’ve ever been in the underworld of depression, you know how hard it is to do what you need to get better, even if you know what you have to do.
Eventually, I started making art sporadically, with considerable resistance. And as I scribbled and colored and collaged, I returned to my kindred spirit, Sylvia Plath.
I have asked three different therapists if loving The Bell Jar means I’m suicidal. They all gave hilariously similar responses, “No. But what is The Bell Jar again?” (FYI - the narrator tries to take her own life and ends up in a mental hospital.)
I’ve read The Bell Jar at least three times, and I often revisit it when I’m feeling especially sorry for myself, like no one understands the torment of my mind.
This time, though, something was different. I listened to Maggie Gyllenhaal’s impeccable performance of The Bell Jar, and I needed more. I started listening to Red Comet, a 1100-page chronicle of Sylvia’s life, and immediately bought a physical copy to make notes in the margins. And then I read the Ariel poems for the first time, even though poetry usually makes me tired.
I found myself nodding along and muttering sassy mmhmms out loud. I was flooded with inspiration, rage, and compassion. I felt like if I had been alive and working in the 1950s and 60s, her story could have been my own.
She was a diligent academic and a rule follower who did everything to please her mother.
Despite her talents as a writer and artist, she felt she would never be successful without a man.
Her lower-middle-class upbringing made her resentful of wealth and privilege, but gave her an understanding that, to a certain point, money is necessary for happiness.
She spent her youth condemning the traditional path of women to marriage and children, but ended up happily doing both, only to later find herself drowning under her responsibilities.
And even with all her determination, she was also a fragile woman who needed real help to manage her mental illness.
But of course, I am not Sylvia Plath, and I don’t have to end up like her. Instead, I can channel her passion for creation and her dedication to doing something important in this world.
For my Bell Jar Collection, I created bright, glossy shadowboxes that each hold a self-portrait figure behind an iron fence, in front of an original painting.
Each one is a tiny cage. You have to get up close and peer in to see all they contain. The inside is dark and veiled, with shadows that change throughout the day.
These are the bell jars I’ve been under for the past two years.
I started with familiar painting on raw canvas. But I felt a new conviction to meaningfully convey my recent experience. I created translucent figures from photographs I modeled myself. The different outfits are examples of the costumes I wear to motivate myself to action, from the outside in. The confident temptress. The polished professional. The peaceful mother. The free-spirited artist.
Along with the shadows, there is light in these small pieces, too. The candy-coated boxes are bold and bright, and the insides are lined with gold leaf. The colors and iron fences are references to New Orleans. Because despite all my anguish over the move, I do really love this city.
We contain multitudes. We can grow and change. We can always begin again.