the vessel

What is a vessel?
A vessel to me is a container — a form made to hold.
I can place in it whatever I choose…
…whatever I no longer want to keep inside myself.

Over the course of two days I was building a vessel on stage, I invited the audience to participate in the creation of a collective sculpture. Visitors were invited to interact with the form in whatever way felt most honest to them: to add, subtract, smooth, scar, press, carve, or repair.

A total of 50 participants contributed to the work. Each was also invited to bring a personal reflection — something they were ready to release: a grief, a memory, a disappointment, a lost love, an unspoken wound. The vessel became a container for these emotions, a physical repository for what no longer needed to be carried inside the self.

The culmination of this experience was the deconstruction of the vessel — an act of release, an exercise in letting go, and a reminder of the ephemerality of all things.