Sonder
n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

John Koenig, from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Our minds and bodies hold memories as they grow, live, and fade within us. These fluid, organic, ceramic objects mimic the way they move between one another and change over time. Just as we can never unlive a moment, these clay bodies have been permanently altered through the process of being sculpted and fired and allude to the physical and psychological creation and retention of our memories.

Much of the way I experience remembering is through the discovery of a mere pebble or watching the light fade at the end of the day. When and where before have I plucked a pebble from the ground or watched as the sky goes dark?

In the summers as a kid, I would roam the forests and streams of northern Minnesota, excavating objects and bringing them home to play with, ponder, and study. This activity has continued into adulthood where I have realized that moments are only meaningful because of their temporality. Images of fleeting moments and ephemeral objects have been set in resin and fixed in time, attempting to preserve their meaning before inevitably transforming in my memory. Those forests, mold, lichen, and cycles of growth and decay were influential in creating the surfaces of this work, and I hope to return to them for many summers to come.