I start with a thin black line, the kind I see in cracked asphalt. Black is the mother color and brings out the best in all the rest-like a good mother should.

It’s 4am and my hands are bleeding, bruised, and filthy. I’m covered in sawdust and I smell like a bonfire. I’ve never felt more alive.

The wall sculptures I’m working on are an attempt to join my first loves- drawing and manual labor, into one cohesive aesthetic. I encountered and easily adapted to these two worlds at a very young age- I worshiped their tactile qualities, which made it clear to me that my reality was more visual than verbal; physical. I wanted to know if other people somewhere shared my sensibilities. So I traveled and found them.

Having been partially blinded by a brain tumor, my disrupted visual field focuses on what is below eye level. I notice the cracked asphalt at my feet and the subtle shifts of the blacktop as light plays off of it; I see this before anything else.