Mariah Shelby is a metalsmith and craftswoman based in New Mexico. She creates relics that focus on understanding the stirrings of human existence. Externalizing emotions that are processed.

My work focuses on physiological responses both my own and others, as a response to the pandemic related anxiety and depression. I am interested in the ways many of us have experienced the pandemic and the shared in the experience of rapid social, political, and personal changes, that have exploded since March 2020. My work operates to process and cope with my individual emotional strains tying me to the collective experience during the pandemic. Within my work, I focus my emotions into a visual language as a goal to connect with others on an experiential level.  I am interested in the trauma responses of my body ranging from dissociation to panic attacks that have consumed my idle moments. My choices in material and processes are a response to communicating feelings and emotions that are difficult to put into words. Thus, my work has created the opportunity to process the World around me and how my body is interacting within it.