Danielle M.

Softly into Grief
White salmon clay, underglaze, glaze, glitter, epoxy
11” x10” x 9”
Credit: Danielle M.Artist Bio

Danielle Maveal is an art therapy graduate student who works through and with creativity, relationship, and narratives. Her care is inclusive and affirming of different bodies, neurotypes, and identities. She has a background in community building and brings her deep interest in collaboration, connection, and care to this work. As a potter, artist, and crafter, Danielle also believes in the power of creativity in finding your way back to your inner knowing.

Her work as an emerging art therapist and the work in this show is inspired by Bruce Moon’s quote, “Creation does not ease but rather ennobles the pain.”

Artist Statement

At the start of my last semester, my mother died after a fast two-year progression of ALS. She died with dignity, holding my hand. It surprised me to find the experience of her death was deeply healing. Those who showed up to care for her, and to care for me, in the days before and after offered tender care that seemed to land me softly into grief.

This experience widened my heart and my tolerance for what was before unimaginable. I’ve noticed I’m more able to gently stay with others’ experiences of hurt, confusion, pain, and loss. In therapy sessions, I am in awe as I sit with people’s vulnerability, trust, creativity, and resilience. Grief comes into sessions in soft waves. I acknowledge it and let it flow around and past me, like clouds. A gentle reminder of my own humanity and my own capacity to care for another.

Each piece in this small collection is a reflection of the small, quiet waves of grief in the work. All of these pieces are handbuilt. Making these pieces has provided a container for the grief, helping to keep my awareness of its presence. Each carries different surface treatments and glazes with secret moments of glitter that catches light like grief. My hope is that these pieces invite a quiet kind of looking.

In these records of working through grief and beginning my journey as an art therapist, I recognize grief as being ordinary and human, and capable of expanding our creativity, capacities, and connections.