The Specimen

Somewhere in Rome I came upon this marble face. I no longer remember exactly where — and I've come to understand that loss is as much part of the piece now as the face is, the feeling reminding me of the way certain experiences blur at the edges the longer you carry them, the details dissolving while the weight remains.

As I edited the series and began making the works, I kept being pulled back to this frame — caught on film, eclipsed in time, I knew it held a deep remembrance in me that needed to be expressed, and set free. As the piece took form, the process continued to hold the power of resonance I felt from the start, allowing me to think outside the box of 2D and instead create a tangible display that felt appropriate and honest to what I was processing.

The face, printed on silk, now sits on five steel spikes that penetrate it, pinning it to its base the way a collector pins a butterfly — not to destroy it, but to fix it in place, to mark its permanence, to say: this happened, and it is not going anywhere, so why not examine it, see what we can learn. The antique glass dome descends over the scene, sealing the drama inside its own stillness — preserved and displayed, the way we preserve and display the things we cannot ever fully release.

It is about the delicate nature of childhood, about what gets forsaken in abandonment, and about what the people left behind are asked to carry, invisibly, indefinitely. The five spikes are not decorative — they are representations of those who remained. The marble face is cold, classical, and unreachable, which is exactly right. The glass holds it all in suspension: visible, contained, and never fully resolved. Available for reflection, but not alteration.

This is one of the two most personal works in Bright Ruin (2025), my series of over 45 unique works shot entirely on analog film over the course of 10 days in Rome, and first exhibited at Gallery ATARAH in September 2025.