Anxiety Sculpture by Julia O'Sullivan: Exploring the Hidden Reality of an Anxious Mind
Updated: Aug 31
The Anxiety Sculpture By Julia O'Sullivan
Exploring the Hidden Reality of an Anxious Mind
Anxiety is something that has touched my life many times.
I have watched people I love struggle with it, sometimes quietly and sometimes in ways that completely disrupted their lives.
I have seen racing thoughts become overwhelming fear.
A pounding heart.
Trembling hands.
Sleepless nights.
Avoidance.
And the endless cycle of what if?
I don't live with chronic anxiety myself, so I could never claim that this sculpture represents exactly what it feels like to experience it.
It doesn't.
What it represents is my attempt to understand it.
Through observation, research and listening to the experiences of others, I began trying to understand what might be happening beneath a face that, to the outside world, could appear perfectly calm.
And one idea kept returning.
Certainty.
Chapter 1 – When the Mind Refuses to Rest
When I began researching anxiety, I quickly realised how inadequate the word worry can be.
We all worry.
But the experiences I was reading about went far beyond everyday concern.
People described minds that simply would not switch off.
Thoughts were analysed and reanalysed.
Conversations replayed.
Decisions questioned long after they had been made.
Possible futures imagined in extraordinary detail.
Again and again came the same two words:
What if?
What if this happens?
What if I've made the wrong decision?
What if something goes wrong?
What if I missed something?
What if...?
The possibilities seemed endless.
And the body could respond to those possibilities as though the danger were already real, even when there was no immediate threat.
As I researched, I began noticing something beneath many of these experiences.
A desperate search for certainty.
If I think about this enough, perhaps I can predict what will happen.
If I replay that conversation, perhaps I can find what I missed.
If I examine every possibility, perhaps I can prevent the bad one.
If I prepare for everything, perhaps nothing can take me by surprise.
And that fascinated me.
Because beneath all that thinking and questioning was something else.
An attempt to control the uncontrollable.
How do you calculate a future that hasn't happened?
How do you prepare for every possible outcome?
How do you find certainty in a world that can never promise it?
You can't.
But what happens when the mind keeps trying anyway?
That became the anxiety I wanted to explore.
Chapter 2 – Searching for Order in Chaos
The question I was left with was deceptively simple:
How do you create order in a world that will always contain uncertainty?
That question led me towards mathematics.
Mathematics seemed almost the perfect opposite of anxiety.
An equation offers the possibility of an answer.
There is logic.
Structure.
Rules.
Something can be calculated, tested and solved.
Life isn't like that.
There are simply too many variables.
One decision changes another.
One unexpected event sends everything in a different direction.
People change.
Circumstances change.
Life changes.
However carefully we plan, something will eventually happen that we didn't calculate.
And that was where mathematics became interesting to me.
Because I wasn't looking for equations that could solve anxiety.
I wanted them to represent the attempt to solve uncertainty itself.
If only there were a calculation for the future.
A formula that could tell us everything was going to be alright.
An equation into which we could feed every possibility and receive one reassuring answer:
Nothing bad is going to happen.
But no such equation exists.
The more I thought about that contradiction — our desire for certainty within a world built upon variables — the further my research took me.
Mathematics had given me order.
Now I needed its opposite.
Chaos.
Chapter 3 – The Language of Symbolism
Once I understood what I wanted the sculpture to explore, I needed to give those ideas a physical form.
How do you paint uncertainty?
How do you sculpt a thought that refuses to stop?
How do you make the invisible noise inside someone's mind visible to everybody else?
That became the challenge.
The Equations
I covered the exterior of the Head with mathematical equations.
After everything I had discovered about the search for certainty, they became the perfect visual language.
Calculation covering the mind.
An endless attempt to find the answer.
But amongst all that apparent order, I introduced something far less predictable.
Butterflies.
The Butterflies and Chaos Theory
The butterflies are beautiful, delicate and seemingly harmless.
But they carry another idea entirely.
Chaos Theory.
The Butterfly Effect describes how a tiny change within a complex system can eventually produce an enormous and unpredictable consequence.
One small event.
One different decision.
One unexpected moment.
And the future changes.
That felt remarkably appropriate for Anxiety.
A single possibility can become the beginning of an entire imagined chain of events.
What if this happens?
Then this might happen.
And if that happens...
What then?
Suddenly one small thought has travelled an enormous distance.
The butterfly became the perfect contradiction.
Something delicate and beautiful representing the unpredictability of what might happen next.
But I wanted it to carry another possibility too.
Transformation.
Because I didn't want to suggest that a person experiencing anxiety is permanently trapped within it.
People find ways to understand their anxiety.
They develop strategies.
They learn what triggers it.
They seek help.
They sometimes move through things that once felt impossible.
So my butterflies were allowed to carry both meanings.
Chaos and possibility.
The Copper Rods — Thoughts That Escape
Then there are the copper rods.
They physically project out from the Head, breaking through the boundary of the sculpture and invading the space around it.
I etched words and phrases into them.
Thoughts.
Questions.
Fears.
Possibilities.
The things that arrive uninvited and refuse to disappear simply because someone says:
Stop worrying about it.
I wanted those thoughts to become almost impossible to contain.
They don't sit neatly inside the skull.
They stick out.
They interrupt.
They demand space.
Because anxiety doesn't necessarily remain conveniently contained within the mind either.
It can interfere with sleep.
Work.
Relationships.
Decisions.
The body.
Everyday life.
And visually, that's exactly what the rods do.
The Head can no longer contain them.
The thoughts have escaped.
But there was still somewhere else I needed to take the viewer.
Because beneath all the calculations, butterflies, questions and thoughts was another experience I wanted to explore.
What happens when one thought doesn't simply escape?
What happens when instead you follow it?
And follow it.
And follow it.
That is where the rabbit hole begins.
Chapter 4 – Falling Down the Rabbit Hole
The outside of the Anxiety Head is busy.
But the inside is where the mind really begins to unravel.
I wanted the interior to feel like falling down a rabbit hole.
One thought leads to another.
One question becomes ten.
One possibility becomes a hundred imagined outcomes.
You begin with something small and suddenly find yourself somewhere completely different, wondering how on earth you got there.
That became the internal labyrinth.
A mind travelling through possibility after possibility, searching for an answer that may not exist.
There is something almost cruel about that cycle.
The mind believes that if it just keeps thinking, eventually it will reach certainty.
So it keeps going.
Another possibility.
Another calculation.
Another route through the maze.
But every answer creates another question.
Every path can divide again.
And the rabbit hole gets deeper.
But mine doesn't end inside the Head.
It comes out.
The Clock Spring
Descending from the rabbit hole is a steel spring taken from a clock.
I unwound it and etched words along its surface, allowing the thoughts from inside the Head to physically travel downwards through the sculpture.
One thought.
Then another.
Then another.
The further you follow them, the deeper you travel.
But there was a very deliberate reason I chose a spring from a clock.
Because now something else enters the story.
Time.
The spring descends towards the wooden plinth, where it meets a spiral of clockwork cogs built into the base.
The thoughts that began inside the mind have reached the machinery of time.
And this is where the narrative changes again.
When Old Takes Over
Within the spiral of cogs, old takes over.
I wanted ageing to enter the sculpture because it represents perhaps one of the greatest uncertainties of all.
We know it is coming.
We just don't know what it will bring.
Will I remain healthy?
Will I lose my independence?
What will happen to my body?
Will the people I love still be here?
What will my life look like ten, twenty or thirty years from now?
There are endless possibilities to worry about.
And absolutely no calculation that can give us the answer.
We can exercise.
Plan.
Prepare.
Look after ourselves.
Make sensible decisions.
But ultimately there is something none of us can negotiate with.
Time.
It keeps moving.
That is why the wooden plinth became such an important part of the Anxiety sculpture.
It isn't simply something for the Head to stand upon.
It completes the journey.
The equations on the exterior attempt to calculate the future.
The butterflies introduce chaos and unpredictability.
The rabbit hole draws us into an endless chain of possibilities.
The etched clock spring carries those thoughts downwards.
And finally they arrive at the cogs of time — something that will continue moving regardless of how desperately we might wish to control it.
The entire sculpture has followed the same question from the very beginning:
What if?
What if this happens?
What if that changes?
What if I lose this?
What if I grow old?
What if...?
We can calculate.
We can analyse.
We can prepare.
We can worry.
And still the clock turns.
Chapter 5 – More Than Worry
One of the greatest misconceptions about anxiety is that it is simply worrying too much.
We all worry.
We worry about our families, our health, our finances, our futures and the people we love.
Worry is part of being human.
But anxiety can be something altogether different.
For some people, it can be relentless.
The body can respond as though a threat is physically present even when there is no immediate danger.
The heart races.
Adrenaline rises.
Sleep becomes difficult.
Situations are avoided.
Decisions become enormous.
And something that may appear insignificant to one person can feel overwhelming to another.
Looking In
Throughout my life, I have watched people I care about experience anxiety in very different ways.
That was important when I created this Head because I didn't want to suggest that there is one universal experience of anxiety.
There isn't.
Nor do I want to pretend that because I researched it, observed it and created a sculpture about it, I suddenly know what it feels like to live with chronic anxiety.
I don't.
I remain the artist looking in.
And I think that distinction matters.
This sculpture is my interpretation of what I discovered through research and through listening and observing.
Someone living with anxiety might have created something entirely different.
Their rabbit hole might not look like mine.
Their what if? might lead somewhere I could never imagine.
That doesn't make either experience less valid.
It simply reminds me that there are limits to what we can understand from the outside.
Just Stop Worrying
Creating this Head made me question one of the easiest things we say to somebody who is anxious:
“Stop worrying.”
As though they haven't already thought of that.
As though switching off the thought were simply a decision they had forgotten to make.
If only it were that easy.
The more I researched anxiety, the more I began to understand that the mind desperately searching for reassurance can also be the mind generating the next question.
The attempt to find certainty can create another possibility.
Another what if?
Another reason to keep thinking.
That changed the way I looked at anxiety.
It made me realise how easy it is, from the outside, to offer a solution to something we don't fully understand.
What This Head Taught Me
I didn't want to create a frightened face and say:
This is anxiety.
I wanted to look beneath the expression.
To ask what might be happening inside a mind that cannot simply stop thinking because someone tells it to.
And perhaps that is what creating this Head ultimately taught me.
I may never know exactly what another person's anxiety feels like.
I don't need to pretend that I do.
But I can listen.
I can take their experience seriously.
And I can resist the temptation to reduce something complicated to worrying too much simply because that is how it looks from where I am standing.
So when someone is trapped inside an endless cycle of what if?, perhaps the answer isn't:
“Stop worrying.”
Perhaps it begins with:
“Tell me what you're worried about.”
Discover The Disorderly Demise of the Cerebral Cortex as a complete collection. Meet all seven Heads, explore the ideas that connect them and see how each sculpture approaches a different experience of the human mind.
Step behind the finished sculptures and see how the Heads were actually made. From moulding my own face and experimenting with materials to painting their interiors, constructing their individual plinths and solving the inevitable problems along the way — this is the making of the collection.
The Anxiety Head is part of The Disorderly Demise of the Cerebral Cortex, a collection of seven contemporary sculptures exploring mental health, identity and the hidden landscapes of the human mind. Each sculpture tells a different story, inviting viewers to look beyond diagnosis and discover the person within. Explore the collection:
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