Tobey Sharp Studio

In the fall of 2019, when I was a sophomore in high school, my father underwent a triple bypass surgery. It was to repair blocked arteries in his heart, and restore proper function to it. At the time, I did not fully grasp exactly how big a deal this was. The scope was not clear to me, the risks, the money, the time, the recovery – it was all something that I at the time never had to think about. That was on my parents. I wasn’t at the hospital for the surgery, I was only there in the days following. Even then my Dad was in a lot of pain. Not from the surgery site, but in his back from the way his arms were positioned during the surgery. This was a pain he could not be provided relief for. I recognized this, understood that there was nothing that the doctors could do for him at that moment, but I also recognized that I could. I wanted to help, so I stood and rubbed a pressure point on his hand, one I had recently seen online that was a point of pain relief. Whether or not it was actually helping is up for debate, I like to think it did something, but it’s neither here nor there as what is actually important about this memory is the act itself. The show of care. The first real one that I showed my dad in the sense of taking care of him instead of him taking care of me. Even steeped in the stress of that time I look back on this fondly. 

Through this piece I conveyed the pain melting and falling away as I hoped it would in the moment through my actions. The wax that is cast from a mold of my dad’s back melting off the internal structure and falls unsteadily into a casting of my hands, posed in the same position that I was in while massaging his hand. The tiles that catch the wax and support my hands are ones taken from my childhood home, a place of comfort and rest to me even now. The piece as a whole is a representation of support I hoped to show my parents, and a way to pay tribute to how they take care of me. 

I love you, Mom and Dad XOXO