Until It Was Done
My son brought home a picture of a table and asked if I could build it. I didn't know yet that he was handing me a reason.
It starts a decade before I built it.
One of my sons had a science fair project — bridges made of craft sticks. I helped him build them, and somewhere in that process I found something I didn't expect: I loved it. The science fair ended. I didn't stop. I kept building, year after year, without quite knowing why.
He asked if I could build one like it.
Ten years later, I was at the lowest point of my life. I won't say more than that.
That same son came home one day with a picture of a table and asked if I could build him one like it.
I said yes. And then I had something to do with my hands — a reason to get up, a problem to solve, a small forward motion when everything else had stopped. Slowly, piece by piece, I climbed. The work didn't fix things. But it gave me somewhere to put them, and a reason to keep going while the real help did its work.
Somewhere in the building, I understood.
This wasn't a hobby anymore. This was my medium. This was the work I was meant to be making.
This table is what led to Vessel. It's why I now submit to shows. Everything in the What Remains series traces back to these two tiers of craft sticks and resin — the piece I built when I needed it most, that turned out to be the beginning of everything.
The most important piece I've made.
It's a small table. It's also the most important thing I've ever built — not because of how it looks, but because of what it gave me: purpose, a path forward, and the realization of who I am as an artist.
We are all built of small, simple things. It's the way we hold together that creates the art.