Sculpture created out of natural found materials in response to the COIV-19 pandemic.

The places that we occupy effect our whole being. Some sites that have changed my life are contained within these boxes. Some are locations where I experienced revelation and insight. Others are my ground zero. Some of these places I have only visited once, while others are more familiar to me than the back of my hand. A few are places of peace – places I can go to when I do not feel grounded or secure. Additionally, some of these boxes contain a place I hope to never return to.

When memories and emotions become overwhelming, I visualize putting them away into organized, wooden containers. This allows me to break down the meaning of these places into smaller doses and revisit them at a later time. I can also move these boxes around, creating new words and narratives for myself. I am ready to invite others into my head and witness the imagery, words, colors and objects I have been collecting in boxes for over 30 years.

Paper Sculpture, 2018

100 Day Projects are extremely beneficial for my own mental health journey. They serve as motivation to create something each day, reflect on my thoughts, check in with my emotions, and process my day to day experiences. It is because of the 100 Day Project process that I am able to practice a creative form of self-care, as well as to adapt these projects to therapeutic directives with my clients/patients.

I have completed several 100 Day Projects over the years and find it to be a beneficial exercise in my therapeutic practice as well. My current 100 Day Project series (100 Days fo Houses) is always posted daily on my Instagram account @sayreynolds15.

This is a celebration of the lyrics that we turn to when we are upset, ungrounded, lost, insecure, confused and/or scared. This is a recollection of moments you wake up in the morning and there is already a song in your head, or you drive to work and whatever you listen to clings to your eardrums for the rest of the morning.

Various publications of annual reports, sustainability reports and magazines

Andrea Gibson is (mindfully choosing this word) a spoken word poet and activist based in the United States. Their performances usually addressed topics such as gender, sexuality, mental health, love and current events. Gibson stated that the poem “Jellyfish”  was originally “a poem I would never read to anybody” and it has evolved over the last few years. They first performed this poem in a field in Idaho, where their friend recorded it and made it available on YouTube. It is now featured on their album Flower Boy. These pages are designed as a series to be a visual representation of Gibson’s words.

Throughout one’s process to become a therapist, developing an understanding of family systems and how they affect a person’s interpersonal relationships is crucial to identifying blind spots that may occur in one’s career. For the purposes of this study, I interviewed myself, my paternal grandmother (nanny) and grandfather (pop), my dad, my mom, and my brother. This selection of family members was made with a specific intention: I wanted to examine my paternal line to uncover how gender roles, emotional expression, and communication styles were developed and passed on to me (and my siblings) through the multigenerational transmission process. I utilized the family of origin project outline (Kerr, 2008) as well as the Transgenerational Script Questionnaire (Gayol, 2019) to compile an outline of questions to ask these family members.

My use of mirrors represents the importance of reflection and self-awareness. Only when we look closely at ourselves can we read the story. The hexagon is a symbol of family and strength for me: there are six members in my immediate family. Each side of the hexagon pays tribute to an important lesson that my family and this project have taught me.

Each panel represents one of my three siblings (the numbers are their birth dates). When I am making certain pieces of art with them in mind, I often ruminate about the “before and after” of being kids and being adults. I catch myself trying to find a moment that I can point to and say “There it is. The missing piece. Now we are reconnected. Now we are safe. Now I am not afraid.”