Under Pressure

“Made under pressure
a driven woman,
worth known and not compared.
Strong, confident, glowing,
surface cracked but repaired.
Carbon
graphite, soft but capable,
demanding heat and pressure,
turning, shaping, growing,
oppressed into a diamond.
Under pressure,
the ambitious woman.”
-Ashley Rivers

The UNDER PRESSURE series was created as part of the 2022 Creative Pinellas Emerging Artist Grant. The series is meant to represent not only the societal pressures upon us, but the pressures we place upon ourselves. The pieces are a physical representation of all the struggles and hardships crushed together, that eventually turn us into the diamonds that we are meant to be.
The diamonds that we are.