Empty Nest/New Beginning
We must be hatched or go bad
It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg.
We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg.
We must be hatched or go bad.
— C.S. Lewis
This month, I wanted to share with you the process behind a recently-completed art piece called Empty Nest/New Beginning.
As the title of the piece suggests, this assemblage reflects an inquiry into my daughter’s recent move to California - a transition I was simultaneously dreading and welcoming.
Empty Nest/New Beginning makes a particularly good story of discovery, as I genuinely didn’t know how I was feeling about my daughter’s flight from our nest. Only by engaging in the process of the work did I learn what I needed to understand about the place in which I find myself.
A place of hatching.
Phase 1: Composting
My daughter left home in early August, and the months before and after she departed, I found myself doing a great deal of composting work, sifting through the last 24 years of motherhood and all of the living that flowed through those years.
“You must let things die or break or be still awhile before rebirthing and rebuilding from a more careful and powerful foundation… You must surrender and feel it all in order to learn. You must take rest before the flight.” - Victoria Erickson
I was
Reintegrating
Stewing
Breaking down
Revisiting
Stirring
Going back to the drawing board, not with a “clean slate” - all of the joys and wonders and challenges of mothering are woven into me - but in a state of curious openness to discovering what is next.
Phase 2: Maybe a nest?
Sometime in early September, I felt like I wanted to start working with this “letting go and starting over” energy in the form of an art piece. I started with no clear vision, but the idea of doing something with a nest seemed like the right move, so I started weaving a nest of wire, sticks, and various yarns and twines.
When the nest was mostly done, I stuck an image of adult and child hands in the center of it, and started playing with it in a box against various backgrounds.
I had painted this box red for an earlier project that never came to fruition. It called to me for this piece because the two side by side zones of the box gave me the idea that I could perhaps explore the relationship with the “empty nest” experience side by side with some image of what comes next.
In this experimental early draft of the box, a lot of things didn’t work, but some elements that felt resonant started to emerge:
The patches of sky on little mirrors suggested movement into the beyond and a pull toward flight.
The “O” block suggested the starting over at zero, and the little shoes felt like they could represent where I find myself standing today.
The seed packet images of the garden gave me a sense of fertility and blossoming.
The broken egg shells seemed important, too, as a symbol of the loss of my daughter in my house and daily life. Laying the shells out in this vertical line also gave me the idea of ascension and I liked the contrast of a vertical plane in contrast to the strong circle of the “nest” side.
I also really liked the fragment of text I found in a children’s book about animals - seen here in the lower right of the nest side of the box. I looked up the pages on birds, wondering if there might be something there I could use, and found a description of how a mother bird feeds her babies.
Lots of things also felt annoying about this draft! I didn’t like any of the collage-style backgrounds I tried behind the nest, I didn’t like how the blue nest was playing in the red box, or with the colors of the seed packets, and I didn’t have a sense of what the other side of the box was trying to say, other than starting over in a new garden?
Phase 3: Nest #2 and The Flip
Paying attention to the patterns of what was resonating and what was annoying me, I started a fresh draft, beginning with building a second nest that was a little smaller and more colorful than the first.
Though I liked the cosmic blues and purples of the first nest (and am already building a separate box around it), this one felt closer to the sense of the lively, colorful, messy, living world of mothering. I cracked a lovely little quail eggshell in two and loved the glossy white emptiness of the inner space.
I decided that the nest didn’t need to compete with a whole complicated background, it needed a simple space that focused attention on all the activity going on within it.
I also decided to flip the box over so that the smaller spaces were on the bottom instead of the top, and so that the empty nest side would be a bit smaller than the “what’s next” side. The small compartment beneath the nest felt like a perfect place to put three offering bowls, representing all of the meals cooked, all of the life force given, all of the energy infused into creating a healthy child and a harmonious family.
Here’s how the “empty nest” side landed:
MEANWHILE…
on the other side of the box, here’s what started to take shape:
On the back of the cover of a book about stars, I found the circular image of the Northern Stars, and I loved how the repeated circle shape both echoed and extended the shape of the nest - now the whole cosmos becomes my nest. I bedazzled the stars with tiny rhinestones and put one of the seed packet images on top of it - and bedazzled the red flowers as well for good measure.
Using the same materials I’d used to build the nest, I forged a ladder on which I hung a big silver star charm, with a golden mirror behind it to double it via reflection.
The little shoes found a home on top of the “O” block, with fragments of shells scattered on the ground around them, signifying both the sense of standing in the ruins of an earlier life, but also the sense of being newly hatched into a next stage of life.
Phase 4: Final Touches
In the final, whole piece, you can see that I added even more sparkle to the nest, and added a tiny silver star next to the bird flying away in the top window in the nest space. My daughter is flying toward her star, while I am still climbing towards mine.
All of the mirrors, sequins, and shiny surfaces make this a piece that shifts and changes as the light moves through a room. I’ve been enjoying it at the foot of my bed while awaiting professional photography and eventually will release it to a new home.
I come away from the journey of the art-making with a new understanding that I am transitioning into an expansive and vibrant time devoted to celebrating the joys of the nest while shifting my energies to the tending of my own garden and the pursuit of my own creative path that takes me into deep, sparkly, juicy, and life-giving space.
I call that a worthwhile adventure!
If you liked the “process journal” quality of this post:
You may also enjoy a column I wrote last October on Creativity as Spiritual inquiry, informed by Adina Allen’s work at the Jewish Studio Project.
Now in my new art shop - The 2026 Calendar!
Some of the featured images in the calendar:
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OHHHHH I love this soooo much, Sara! Especially "paying attention to the patterns of what was resonating and what was annoying me" - YES YES! I want to borrow that! and "Now the whole cosmos becomes my nest"❤️...Ahhhhhh. AND this "standing in the ruins AND newly hatched"....Just beautiful!