so you can bloom
Kira Joy Williams, 2025.
Hand built greenware ceramic, red and black iron oxide, blue underglaze.
Video clips of returning the sculpture to the water at South Beach, San Juan Island, Washington, on the unceded land of Samish families.
It took me many long hours to make this sculpture — it was a practice in devotion. It began as an exploration of how serenity looks when it shines in its power.
The name of this sculpture, so you can bloom, is a love letter to the ancestors that lived so I could live. They lived despite everything that tried to kill them. This sculpture is also an imagining of those ancestors that refused the evil brutality that faced them as they were kidnapped by settlers and forced across the Atlantic Ocean. Those that jumped, or were pushed, are still part of that water and the great unknown.
Then I returned her to the Earth, creating a meditation-portrait on the art of refusal, sovereignty, and rest as resistance. These concepts have been swirling around in my brain for some time, and I’m so grateful I got to enter into a relationship with this sculpture to let the ideas blossom further.
I am still understanding how destruction can bring liberation. Still understanding how to move through grief with respect and love. I hope to bring honor to the muses and the ancestors and all mysterious visitors with my art offerings.