Return to Me: Section 10, Part 01 | Ink on Paper | 30" x 22" | 2015

Return to Me: Section 10, Part 02 | Ink on Paper | 30" x 22" | 2015

Return to Me: Section 10, Part 03 | Ink on Paper | 30" x 22" | 2015

Artist Statement: Drawn to lost histories, concealed origins and imperceptible connections, my work tells the story of the small and unseen, of dust and the inception of all things, of imperceptible connections across vast expanses of space-time, and the still-obscure forces that entangle our past, present, and future.

Employing this invisible past to explore the delicacy of existence and consequence, much of this work maps imperceptible astro-geologic movement, charting a path from the familiar natural landscapes that surround us, to the distant past, back to our cosmological beginnings. Focused on the smallest of particles that coalesce to form everything we know and see, these works function as expansive cosmic cartographies that chronicle the fragmentary evidence of rocks, remnants and crumbly debris, and trace the passage of dust—a diaphanous, celestial material and ghostly substance that, while ubiquitous and ostensibly insignificant, connects all things, and contains in it all the memories of our lives, histories, and our universe—inextricably intertwined. The endeavor is akin to a physical cosmology, investigating how this material connects us to our present—how we are born of it, how we will return to it, how meaning can be assimilated from the microscopic fragments that we ourselves shed, and simultaneously, from the residues of exploded stars that continuously float down on us from past eons.

Rendering a continuously evaporating world that follows these remains backwards to our infinitesimal beginnings, and simultaneously charting our evolution forward to its theoretical endings, these delineations have revealed ceaseless cyclicality, recurrent patterns, circular systems, and linear connections that echo the continuity and complexity of infinite catastrophe and regeneration, with edges always receding back to organic dust.

If examined closely enough, I believe dust could tell the story of everything that ever existed—ultimately expressing an endless cycle of creation and obliteration at once, suggesting the what-was, the what-may-have-been, and the what-is inevitably yet-to-come.