Four structural sculptures. One continuous question. What actually stays when everything passes through a life?
"Everything pours through us — music, family, failure, joy.
What remains is who we become."
An ongoing series in craft sticks and mixed media — each piece a different shape for the same question.
What Remains — No. 1
Everything pours through us. What remains is who we become.
Seven feet of craft sticks, thousands placed by hand. The inner column is raw — glue marks, imperfect joints, the evidence of becoming. The outer layers grow more refined. The resin panels hold what was cut away, suspended and illuminated from within.
What Remains — No. 2
Everyone crosses. Not everyone knows they're on a journey.
Twelve feet long, four feet wide. Craft stick structure under structural glass — transparent by design, so the work beneath is never hidden. Three sections, eight truss stages, no handrails. An everyman's hero's journey made walkable.
What Remains — No. 3
You don't reach your height despite your failures. You reach it because of them.
Six feet tall. Rings of two sizes on alternating faces, joined at the corners by craft stick chain links. Inside: recreations of the pieces of a life that collapsed — the specific failure points rebuilt and placed where they can finally be seen clearly.
What Remains — No. 4 & Final
No beginning. No end. Just the continuous surface of a life being lived.
The final piece in the What Remains series. A Möbius strip built from craft sticks — a form with one surface, no inside, no outside. New skills. New challenges. The series closes on a form that doesn't.
Every finished piece begins with questions. These are the experiments — the attempts to understand how simple sticks can become something more. Each one taught something essential about structure, strength, or the act of making itself.
The first project after the science fair bridge. A powerful lesson in what not to do — and why that's sometimes the most valuable study of all.
It shattered when a son landed on it. A harsh but essential lesson: beauty without structural integrity is just temporary.
Built alone while my wife was away. Eight years later it's still in daily use — a quiet reminder that things made in solitude can become part of daily life.
Built to remember the joy of that first science fair project. Still hangs on my office wall — a reminder of where all of this started.
Started because I needed a frame that didn't exist. Ended up making four, each in a different style — lessons in symmetry, proportion, and the frame as art.
Made for my sister, using a new laser engraver to explore ornamentation. A gift that was also a laboratory for techniques that would follow.
Christmas gifts for my grandkids — and the beginning of a modular approach to building that would become essential for larger work.
I thought strength meant bulk. Sometimes you have to go big to understand how to go efficient.
Built too quickly. It wobbles. The shelves are too small. I use it every day — a daily reminder that speed and impatience create problems.
My son asked for this right after I got laid off. Two months, lots of broken sticks. Therapy disguised as a challenge — the hardest projects are sometimes the ones we need most.
A pure proof of concept. Sometimes you build something small not because it's the final answer, but because it proves the question is worth asking.
High-resolution archival prints are available from each piece in the series. Contact to inquire about availability, pricing, and work in progress.