Whole Rest
I don’t know how common my experience is for others who live with trauma—especially childhood trauma. For me, it felt like being frozen in time and space, with no real sense of feeling. A bit like being in ice. A kind of numbness that wasn’t quite pleasant, but not entirely unpleasant either. It was like being out in the open but not really feeling your skin—your senses dulled, your emotions removed.
It’s a state where relating to others becomes difficult, because you're not fully present—emotionally or sensually. You’re there physically, but otherwise in an altered state of being. You try to make sense of the world, but you can’t. It’s like you don’t have the tools—like an animal stripped of its most vital senses. You're in the world, but not really part of it. You're in your world.
Through years of healing, I began to peel back this state of existence. And through art, I found healing—real and experiential. Making things gave me access to a deeper place, where I could create for myself and begin to make sense of the world I couldn’t quite touch or understand before.
In Whole Rest, I sit in that quiet place where the music has stopped—a deep, deafening silence after a long, loud stretch. I am present now, but the reflection turns inward. I look inside. Whole Rest will be a series of works exploring the experience of trauma, how we live with it, and how we heal.
The childlike state of being present is where I find healing. It’s where we rebuild what was lost. We grieve, yes—but we also begin to crave the new and unexpected. The small, uninvited beauties of life that come to find us and surprise us in their aliveness. They’re not here yet—but they’re on their way.
Through making childlike work, I engage with trauma—not to defeat it, but to understand it. Only the pure aliveness of a child’s connection to their environment seems powerful enough to crack through that frozen state. That ice. That disconnection. That longing to feel.
Whole Rest explores trauma, fear, and becoming—through the eyes and hands of a childlike creator.
My son is my greedy inspiration. As I begin this series, his presence, his love, and his joyful engagement with the world has taught me so much. I want to be more like him—when I move through the world and re-learn how to be. He has inspired me to heal, to become a better father for him, and a better person for myself.
Whole Rest will hold all of that—the trauma, the childhood, the healing. I don’t yet know how many different mediums I’ll use to create these worlds, but I’m going to try everything I can to tell this story. A story of breaking through—with lightness, beauty, and the childlike wonder I’ve come to learn from my beautiful son.