2021 Projects

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Piecing together liberation: kintsugi as transforming reflection
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021-11) Sterling, Colette, author
Healing and Liberation fit together like pieces in a cracked ceramic bowl repaired with Kintsugi. Kintsugi is a Japanese traditional art form, dating back to the 15th century, of repairing ceramic or glass objects with a type of Japanese lacquer called Urushi (漆), which is then covered in gold, silver, brass, or other powdered metals. If done properly, a piece repaired with Kintsugi can last hundreds of years. What started as a mission to repair a broken glass pitcher passed along by a deceased loved one has turned into a greater metaphor for my work in the field of Student Affairs in Higher Education. Seeking knowledge on Kintsugi, itself a dwindling art in Japan, has also reflected on how I heal through the trauma inflicted on my salient identities, my historicity, and informs my future in social justice in higher education. The lenses of wabi-sabi from Japanese Buddhism, Lama Rod Owens's (2020) radical dharma of love and rage, and hook's (1994) Love as the Practice of Freedom inform this mixture of healing and self-reflection in action. Embedded in my relationship to this art is also Walsh and Lopes's (2009) Ethics of Appropriation, which acts as a decentering of my whiteness while providing a framework to ethically engage with cultural knowledge that is not my own.