Anxiety Fossils, May 2026, clay sculptures, by Emma Rarick

This collection of clay forms represents a print, or an impression, of anxiety on a clay surface. To capture this impression, I pinched and squeezed the clay in my hand until I felt a release of anxiety from my body. As the anxiety left my body and entered the clay, the process was complete: the emotion was gone, and its physical footprint was preserved.

I see anxiety as beings that come and go inside of a person. There is not one kind of anxiety, as it never feels the same twice. Rather anxiety is more of a species that is born within us, lives its life, and dies, until another form of anxiety is born again.