If This Work Was Found in a Thousand Years

The Interstellar Traveler

On Permanence, Culture, and Why I Want My Work to Last

Sometimes I imagine someone in the distant future stumbling across one of my ceramic vessels, brushing away the dust, holding it up to the light. Would they see it as art? A ritual object? A cultural artifact from a world they can barely imagine? I hope so.

Because I do think of my work as cultural—not just personal. I’m not only expressing myself, I’m reflecting the time I live in, the currents that move through us all. At times, I feel like an antenna , the current of culture running through me. I pick up signals, reinterpret them, give them form. And in doing so, I contribute back to that same field I’m shaped by.

That’s part of why permanence matters to me.

It’s not about fame or ego (yeah ego, of course, is always lurking around legacy). It’s about witness. About creating work that helps future humans—or whatever beings come next—understand something about who we were, what we loved, feared, reached for.

I don’t have a belief in a conventional afterlife. I’m not counting on some cosmic second act. If there is reincarnation, it won’t be this version of me again—not with these hands, this history, this particular sensory aperture. This is it. This embodiment is the one I’ve got. And I want to say what I came here to say before I’m gone.

That’s why I work in clay—something ancient, something with memory. Something durable. Not because I want them in vaults, but because I want them to last. I want them to survive the amnesia of time.

I want my work to carry a signal.

Why I want Us to Make It

I didn’t expect this sculpture to say so much, but it’s been talking to me ever since I made it. I’ve been calling it The Interstellar Traveler. Maybe it’s a sentinel, or a witness. Maybe it’s us.

Humans are travelers—fragile, intelligent, imperfect creatures moving through a vast, cold, beautiful universe. And maybe we’re alone. Maybe we’re not. But either way, we have each other. And that has to mean something.

When I made this piece, I started thinking differently about legacy. It’s not just about me lasting. It’s about us. I want humanity to survive this perilous moment we’re living through. I want us to make it to the other side of whatever this is: climate crisis, ideological extremism, spiritual disconnection, the collapse of shared truths.

I hope we get somewhere better.

Somewhere we embrace difference instead of fearing it. Somewhere we look at the strange and alien and feel curiosity instead of terror. Somewhere we cultivate reverence for the cosmos, not dominance over it.

My work is a message in a bottle.

A ceramic one, maybe—meant to last. Meant to be found. Not because it carries answers, but because it might help future beings—whether human or otherwise—remember that we cared. That we tried. That we left behind not just destruction, but beauty. Symbols. Eyes that still look back, long after we’re gone.