Decompression Stop

Decompression Stop was created during recovery from autistic burnout. Drawing from underwater experiences, the work uses diving decompression as both visual language and emotional metaphor.

The piece references the experience of floating motionless in the water column during a decompression stop after extended periods at depth. Gradients of mediterranean blues create an atmosphere that feels simultaneously expansive calming and psychologically suspended. The work focuses on the emotional state associated with immersion itself – silence, enhanced perception, deeper breathing, and the acceptance that resurfacing safely requires patience.

“For me, decompression became the perfect metaphor for burnout recovery. After prolonged pressure, you cannot immediately return to normal life without causing more damage. Recovery is slow, fragile, and deliberate.”

This artwork marks Mieog’s first completed piece since the onset of burnout approximately eighteen months earlier. Layers of delicate glass lace are fused together through intense kiln heat, gradually forming a structure that becomes more resilient while still retaining sharp visible traces of vulnerability and fracture.

Together, these materials create a work that occupies the uneasy but hopeful middle space between collapse and recovery — a hopeful meditation on adaptation, fragility, and careful resurfacing.

This artwork marks Mieog’s first completed piece since the onset of burnout approximately 2 years earlier. Layers of delicate glass lace are fused together through intense kiln heat, gradually forming a structure that becomes more resilient while still retaining sharp visible traces of vulnerability and fracture.

Together, these materials create a work that occupies the uneasy but hopeful middle space between collapse and recovery — a hopeful meditation on adaptation, fragility, and careful resurfacing.