*AWARD WINNING* – Judge John Toki
8 high x 7 wide x 7 deep in. Ceramic Metal Sculpture
This sculpture serves as a physical meditation on healing as eclosion—the slow, deliberate process of a new self taking shape from the wreckage of the old. It illustrates the liminality of recovery, capturing a suspended threshold where the individual is neither fully broken nor yet fully integrated.
The piece features a dual-natured sphere: one side remains raw, unrefined, and earthen, while the other reveals a deep, vitrified obsidian. These disparate parts are held in a state of dynamic tension by a series of silver wire loops. These silver sutures represent the conscious architecture of repair; they do not erase the wound, but are built around it to hold the fragments together as a new identity takes root.
The central fissure is not a break, but a gateway where internal vitality (the copper core) forces the protective shell to expand. It suggests that healing is not a return to a former state, but the courage to emerge from trauma as a more complex, integrated whole—transforming the “psychic debris” of transition into a vessel for spiritual transformation.
