REFLECTIONS: What Is a Soul Worth?

Looking down, I look up. Looking out, I look within.

How do we value a soul? Our own, the souls of others, the soul itself. We rarely say it aloud, but we answer the question constantly, through what we protect, what we adorn, and what we overlook.

REFLECTIONS asks that question through materials. The series begins with photographs taken in cemeteries, where colored glass reflects trees and sky. The images are fleeting, a moment of light on a surface. They are printed on polyester, an ordinary, low-class material, then stretched like paintings. Paintings are precious and bespoke, made to be kept and revered. Here, that format is borrowed for something disposable, and the gap between the two is the point.

Then the roots. Hidden beneath the surface of the image, they are what holds us up: a metaphor for the unseen, for whatever grounds a life. I gild them in gold, silver, or copper, but not as the flat, polished gilding of grand old paintings. These roots are textured and tactile, as uneven and alive as the thing they describe. What is usually invisible is given the highest value in the piece.

Over everything goes glitter, the cheapest and most common material of all. Its color is drawn from the image beneath it, so even the low-class layer belongs to the picture. And glitter only works when someone is there to move through the light.

Precious metal beside plastic and sparkle. The sacred beside the mundane. The work doesn't settle which is worth more. It asks you to notice what you reach for, and what you pass by, when you decide what has value.

image of me gilding and coating with glitter