After being diagnosed with scoliosis when I was 13, I was immediately shoved into an unforgiving hard plastic back brace. I had to wear the torture device 23 and a half hours a day for nearly four years. My torso muscles atrophied, my breasts, hips, and legs underwent extensive nerve damage, and my breathing was restricted like a Victorian woman's. Even though I was allowed to take it off for an hour or two, after 30 minutes of being free of the evil contraption, the pain would become so agonizing that I would have to go back in. It was hard dealing with that kind of notion: this thing that had ravished my body, inflicted more emotion and physical pain than I was capable of dealing with, could still cause pain by being without it.
I always resented people around me for not having to go through what I was going through. I knew other people had it worse, but being a teenager, I couldn't imagine there really being something more terrible.
When I started blowing glass, I fell in love with the idea of blowing into cages. I made different types of copper and brass cages and started experimenting with torturing bubbles. I was fascinated with watching these organic forms try to break through their cages. The angry teenager in me got a lot of satisfaction from being able to inflict the pain she went through onto something else. It sounds a bit twisted, but it turned out to be very therapeutic.
I blew a series of different types of braces and displayed them with metal crutches randomly on a wall. I entered the piece into the All School Show at MassArt and actually won. (I, unfortunately, didn't take images of the winning piece. All I have are these mediocre images taken while I was starting to figure out my direction.)