Spending 3 months in my Chicago art studio, exploring distinctly human-made forms,

I wanted the studio itself to retain the cave quality of a human left to their own devices mentally.

This body of work is about traveling back in time to the origin of mankind, where there were no written traces or detailed records of the human experience. All that’s left standing from that time has become sacred. It is utterly mysterious.

It is up to us to decipher what’s been left behind, and to notice that what remains was clearly sculpted by a human hand —not just the result of nature’s tempering or erosion. We have no other choice than to be a bit of a detective to understand the meaning of these totems… and use our collective imagination to find a common agreement on the meaning of these ancestral rituals.

What were these ruins meant for? No one will ever know for sure, and so in that sense, there’s no limits to our projections from our modern perspective, from our futuristic gaze. In that way, I think we can find that what remains is deeply imbued with human life. Every human being can connect to the Ancient, and the Ancient has something for every one of us.

Though I have been seeking to make my art studio a monk like experience for my own selfish use—a place that commands a stillness and a focused artistic contemplation— what I have been fascinated by are... vessels, what I can only think of as “Totems”. I am intrigued by the ritualistic items... that, with enough distancing from the culture that created them, get lost to time. An amphora devoured by nature is rendered useless, and its time stamp elevates it into a work of art. A memento mori accomplishes something of a similar nature.

I kept thinking back on the first person who stumbled upon Stonehenge. How did they feel, and how did they come to the immediate realization that there was a human connection there?

I believe that sepia is a relevant color to explore the notion of the passage of time: the decay, the tarnish, the things one looks back upon.

When I started these January 1st 2022, I really started out just playing with the sepia color, with the washes, and how the ink would interact with water dilution... Playing with more abstract compositions.