KENDALL TANI

Age: 24

Hometown: Mammoth Lakes, CA

Generation: 4th - Yonsei

Biography: Kendall Tani (they/them) is a sometimes-crafter/-illustrator/-printmaker/-artist and a full-time dog-appreciator. You can keep up with their artistic endeavors on Instagram @_sowasowa.

Name of Piece: Convalescence

The Japanese art of kintsugihas personally helped me to accept and to better deal with my mental illness. The art involves mending broken pottery with golden lacquer, highlighting and embracing the fissures and breaks rather than masking them, and, in the process, creating something new, but no less powerful or meaningful. Applied to my personal life, kintsugihas helped me to see my mental illness as an important and formative part of who I am and not something of which to be inherently ashamed. Having felt "broken" by my mental illness, I've seen the recent years of my life as an opportunity to make myself into something new, but still inherently me.