My Carnival Fun House
A nest is supposed to hold still. Mine don’t.
I rivet and layer each piece from polymer clay until it holds the shape of shelter without ever quite settling into it. That visual instability is the point. My childhood home was my grandmother’s apartment in a multi-story courtyard building, and it was never quiet — laundry hung in mazes I ran through, pickle vats cured by the back stairwells, bread was always baking somewhere, and my grandfather pulled quarters from every kid’s ear like he ran the place. It was grounding and it was a carnival at the same time. I never separated the two.
That’s what I’m still building: nests that are also fun houses. Home, in my hands, isn’t a fixed shelter — it’s a structure that holds you steady while everything around it spins.
My childhood was tied very closely to my maternal grandmother. Her apartment was part of a multi-storied complex with a large, central courtyard. All of the neighbors were first or second generation American. On each floor’s back porch area, I’d run through lines of hanging laundry like they were mazes. Vats of dill and bread & butter pickles were curing on benches by back doors that led to wooden stairwells. The smell of baking bread was in the air. Everyone was a character. My grandfather was the magician of the building, pulling quarters from everyone’s ears. They all made up my colorful, fun house second home.