It feels like I have become a sculpture

Being an artist is so much more than being able to make art.

I haven't been able to make art in what feels like forever. It's probably been six months or more; I've lost count. Physically and mentally, I haven't been able to get into the studio and into that flow of making sculpture.

I'm one week away from my surgery (laparoscopy) to see if I have endometriosis. I don't have the words to fully describe what this experience has been like yet, and with the surgery and the unknown looming, it feels overwhelming if I think about it too much.

I was also in hospital last week with severe food poisoning. It was quite a horrific experience, but I'm grateful for it now, in a way. I feel like it has prepared me for being in hospital for the surgery. I've reached 31 and, as far as I can remember, have never had to be hospitalised before. I was hospitalised at around nine months old because I couldn't feed and had some kind of infection.

I can't help but feel that last week reflected what happened when I was a baby: a case of dehydration and being unable to feed myself.

I've always suffered with gut problems, and it feels like I'm potentially on the road to figuring out why. Next week might hold some of the answers.

But whilst I'm lying here, unable to create sculpture, my mind doesn't stop thinking about it. I'm observing my body and thinking about how I might abstract it into my sculptures, and about which parts of me are being scanned and examined by the doctors.

It feels like I have become a sculpture.

When I create a sculpture, I observe it, move it around and inspect it until it feels fully realised and ‘healthy’. Now my body is the sculpture, and the surgeons and doctors are the artists. They are bringing my form back together, hopefully, and discovering the hidden language within it: the systems that make up my own body.

I'm hopeful that they will find some answers for me next week.

I'm fantasising about making sculpture, standing in my studio, making Lazy Susans, and rediscovering the joy and lust for life that I've lost over the last year. I'm also feeling inspired to make some works on paper. I'm itching to create.

Once my bed is set up with all the equipment I need, it will become my studio.

I'm realising that the studio is inside me, even when I cannot be inside the studio.