Pattern & repetition

Ceremonious and tormenting

Jul 26, 2025

A pattern is an ode, a celebration of material and process.

Sometimes it feels like I’m weaving with steel.

Building a pattern is iterative. The repetition is a chant.

Each new piece, cut just to size, complements the existing work, and communicates with it. It builds upon itself to say so much more than one squiggle of steel could ever say on its own.

The process feels magical, yet painful. It’s ceremonious, and tormenting.

In a recent article, I wrote about diversifying or specializing. The monotony of this project is beginning to take its toll. I’ve been working on it since last December.

I’m resolved to finish it, but there’s a piece of me resisting, pushing away, finding different outlets for my creativity.

The repetitious nature of this piece is crux to its purpose and form.

There’s an intricacy, almost visual confusion, caused by overlapping patterns.

That’s one thing I love about sculpture: no matter how measured and meticulous I am, I never really know just what it will look like when it all comes together. There’s a sprinkle (sometimes an ocean) of the unknown inherent in the creation process.

The metal frame is bowing from heating and cooling and heating and cooling. Maybe all my plans will be foiled. Maybe I’ll put all this sweat, energy, and toil into this one sculpture and at the end, it’ll just be a pile of squiggles.

I willingly enter circumstances fraught with failure. The result of all my work will either be precious or wasteful.

Lately, I’ve been asking myself if I should take a step away, and work on something else for a while. Do I set these energized panels aside to weep and wilt while I tinker in other directions, and trust I’ll return to the process when the time is right? Or do I power through to make sure I don’t lose the thread?

I work to create boundaries, so when I’m away from my craft, I really step away. But my garage studio hugs to my home and waits for me with humid breath. It beckons me to blast music and dirty my hands and remember how patterns exist in nature, how metal was pulled from earth itself.

Creating a three-dimensional pattern feels like a nod to my seamstress great grandmother. I’m paying homage to the weavers, and the noticers, and the ones who see connections between two seemingly unrelated things.

It feels like a meditation, a deliberate act. It feels like a handshake with the designer, the organizer, the collector in me. It feels like I’m giving thanks, giving back, giving in.