Something sweet and small to hold, 2026, steel, patina, brass brazing, magnifying glass, 8 x 4 x 5.25"

I remember the bird on the beach: She caught my eye as a graceful figure, her downy summer feathers bathed in damp sand. The sand almost created a shell around the deceased creature, though the wind would always blow, knocking a few grains down and disturbing her newfound dormancy. I shielded her from the wind with a piece of driftwood. I stepped around the jellyfish and urchins, filtering empty mussel shells and seaweed into my shallow pockets. I ensured our endurance of an extended silence, a methodical sighing and crying through my fingertips gesturally outlining her body in shells, and punctuating her wings, spread limply in grace, with soft ties of seaweed. 

Someone kicked the dead bird over the piece of driftwood with which I had sheltered her. Her beautiful restful self was still sprawled across the sand, but now the barricade divided her from the marks of my motions as her soggy, sandy feathers danced once again in the wind. Now that the shell outline I had formed around her was void of its substance, it stood as nothing more than a loose chalky mirror whose origin could not be ensured as natural or humanly hypocritical. I mourned our refusal to feel, and I scoffed at my own stubbornness. 

There is something special in the way we treat things when we know they will soon be gone. Expected loss prompts us to abandon inhibition and emotion is gathered and concentrated into a sharp and striking point of sincerity. When perpendicular to the sun, by cycle or manipulation, the magnifying glass that sits atop the box gathers the light and brings it to a fine, concentrated point that punishes your gaze while warming the metal beneath it. This box is a sanctuary, an intimate stage, a charged embrace, for these passing moments of striking sensitivity. Like a dog that is soon to die, every pet to her head, every gaze in her direction, is intentional, sensitive, and charged with love.

Forever inspired by that bird on the beach.