“What We Carry” — Bones with sterling silver inlay 2016- ongoing.
I work with bone.
Not as symbol, not as shock — but because bone is the most honest material I know. It does not perform. It does not apologize. It is what remains when everything superficial has fallen away. It is the architecture beneath the architecture, the thing that holds us up when everything else has failed. And it endures. Long after we are gone, the bone remains — still carrying, still witnessing, still telling the truth about what we were.
I press sterling silver into bone. Words, mostly. Single words. The ones we don't say enough, the ones we carry so deep inside us that they never make it to the surface. I have been asking what it means that we hold all of this inside us and still manage to withhold it from one another. I have been watching a heart decompose under glass and thinking about America. I have been thinking about the 84 unarmed Black men and boys whose deaths I marked in jagged, unsmoothed silver — left raw on purpose, because there is nothing smooth or finished about any of it.
Nothing human is one-dimensional. Neither is this work.
"Sawubona" — I see you. - 2022-2023 Bones inlaid with sterling silver words, each carved on both sides with the paired truths of being human. The mobile hangs within a wooden structure ten feet tall, slowly turning. It is an acknowledgment — of you, of all of us. Bone, sterling silver inlay, wood — 10 ft h × 9 ft diameter — $20,000 (available)
"Sawubona" — I see you. - 2022-2023 Bones inlaid with sterling silver words, each carved on both sides with the paired truths of being human. The mobile hangs within a wooden structure ten feet tall, slowly turning. It is an acknowledgment — of you, of all of us. Bone, sterling silver inlay, wood — 10 ft h × 9 ft diameter — $20,000 (available)
"Sawubona" — I see you. - 2022-2023 Bones inlaid with sterling silver words, each carved on both sides with the paired truths of being human. The mobile hangs within a wooden structure ten feet tall, slowly turning. It is an acknowledgment — of you, of all of us. Bone, sterling silver inlay, wood — 10 ft h × 9 ft diameter — $20,000 (available)
"Sawubona" — I see you. - 2022-2023 Bones inlaid with sterling silver words, each carved on both sides with the paired truths of being human. The mobile hangs within a wooden structure ten feet tall, slowly turning. It is an acknowledgment — of you, of all of us. Bone, sterling silver inlay, wood — 10 ft h × 9 ft diameter — $20,000 (available)
"Sawubona" — I see you. - 2022-2023 Bones inlaid with sterling silver words, each carved on both sides with the paired truths of being human. The mobile hangs within a wooden structure ten feet tall, slowly turning. It is an acknowledgment — of you, of all of us. Bone, sterling silver inlay, wood — 10 ft h × 9 ft diameter — $20,000 (available)
"Sawubona" — I see you. - 2022-2023 Bones inlaid with sterling silver words, each carved on both sides with the paired truths of being human. The mobile hangs within a wooden structure ten feet tall, slowly turning. It is an acknowledgment — of you, of all of us. Bone, sterling silver inlay, wood — 10 ft h × 9 ft diameter — $20,000 (available)
"84 and Counting." 2018 Small pieces of sterling silver — cut, jagged, intentionally raw at the edges — are inlaid into bone. Each one marks a life cut short. Unarmed Black men and boys, killed by those sworn to protect them. They are grouped into the cities across the U.S.. Bone, sterling silver inlay, $2,000 (Sold)
"84 and Counting." 2018 Small pieces of sterling silver — cut, jagged, intentionally raw at the edges — are inlaid into bone. Each one marks a life cut short. Unarmed Black men and boys, killed by those sworn to protect them. They are grouped into the cities across the U.S.. Bone, sterling silver inlay, $2,000 (Sold)
"84 and Counting." 2018 Small pieces of sterling silver — cut, jagged, intentionally raw at the edges — are inlaid into bone. Each one marks a life cut short. Unarmed Black men and boys, killed by those sworn to protect them. They are grouped into the cities across the U.S.. Bone, sterling silver inlay, $2,000 (Sold)
"Smile, It Will All Be Over Soon Anyway." - 2024 The jawbone of a local antelope carries a single sterling silver word along its curve: Smile. The choice to lean into the absurd, tender, fleeting gift of being alive before we aren't. To find joy not in spite of our impermanence, but because of it. The jawbone grins. So should you. Sterling silver inlay, antelope jawbone $2,000 (Sold to a dentist. Ha!)
"Smile, It Will All Be Over Soon Anyway." - 2024 The jawbone of a local antelope carries a single sterling silver word along its curve: Smile. The choice to lean into the absurd, tender, fleeting gift of being alive before we aren't. To find joy not in spite of our impermanence, but because of it. The jawbone grins. So should you. Sterling silver inlay, antelope jawbone $2,000 (Sold to a dentist. Ha!)
"Smile, It Will All Be Over Soon Anyway." - 2024 The jawbone of a local antelope carries a single sterling silver word along its curve: Smile. The choice to lean into the absurd, tender, fleeting gift of being alive before we aren't. To find joy not in spite of our impermanence, but because of it. The jawbone grins. So should you. Sterling silver inlay, antelope jawbone $2,000 (Sold to a dentist. Ha!)
"The Heart of America." - 2017 A heart — real, and once beating — is fixed to an armature and sealed inside a plexiglass box. There it slowly, deliberately, decomposes. When we lose our capacity to feel the weight of another's suffering, we do not simply become unkind, we rot. Cow heart, wire armature, plexiglass. $3,000 (available)
"The Heart of America." - 2017 A heart — real, and once beating — is fixed to an armature and sealed inside a plexiglass box. There it slowly, deliberately, decomposes. When we lose our capacity to feel the weight of another's suffering, we do not simply become unkind, we rot. Cow heart, wire armature, plexiglass. $3,000 (available)
"The Heart of America." - 2017 A heart — real, and once beating — is fixed to an armature and sealed inside a plexiglass box. There it slowly, deliberately, decomposes. When we lose our capacity to feel the weight of another's suffering, we do not simply become unkind, we rot. Cow heart, wire armature, plexiglass. $3,000 (available)
"Love, Unspent." 2019 A single scapula — the place from which we reach toward one another — carries one word inlaid in sterling silver along its surface: LOVE. It is in there. It has always been in there, produced in the deepest part of us, in the marrow, where life itself is made. The bone holds the word. The word holds the question. What are you saving it for? Bone and sterling silver inlay. (Sold)
"Love, Unspent." 2019 A single scapula — the place from which we reach toward one another — carries one word inlaid in sterling silver along its surface: LOVE. It is in there. It has always been in there, produced in the deepest part of us, in the marrow, where life itself is made. The bone holds the word. The word holds the question. What are you saving it for? Bone and sterling silver inlay. (Sold)
"Love, Unspent." 2019 A single scapula — the place from which we reach toward one another — carries one word inlaid in sterling silver along its surface: LOVE. It is in there. It has always been in there, produced in the deepest part of us, in the marrow, where life itself is made. The bone holds the word. The word holds the question. What are you saving it for? Bone and sterling silver inlay. (Sold)
"Courage." 2017 Courage is not the absence of fear. It is the decision to reach anyway — to extend the shoulder blade toward something uncertain, something difficult, something that might hurt. It does not announce itself. It lives quietly in the bone, waiting to be called upon. The question is whether we will call. Bone and sterling silver inlay. $2,000.00 (available)
"Courage." 2017 Courage is not the absence of fear. It is the decision to reach anyway — to extend the shoulder blade toward something uncertain, something difficult, something that might hurt. It does not announce itself. It lives quietly in the bone, waiting to be called upon. The question is whether we will call. Bone and sterling silver inlay. $2,000.00 (available)
"Courage." 2017 Courage is not the absence of fear. It is the decision to reach anyway — to extend the shoulder blade toward something uncertain, something difficult, something that might hurt. It does not announce itself. It lives quietly in the bone, waiting to be called upon. The question is whether we will call. Bone and sterling silver inlay. $2,000.00 (available)
"Hope." - 2021 Hope is the most stubborn thing we carry. It persists against evidence, against experience, against every reason we have given it to die. It is not naivety — it is an act of defiance. To hope is to insist, quietly and against all odds, that what comes next could still be different. That we are not finished yet. Bone and sterling silver inlay. (Sold))
"Hope." - 2021 Hope is the most stubborn thing we carry. It persists against evidence, against experience, against every reason we have given it to die. It is not naivety — it is an act of defiance. To hope is to insist, quietly and against all odds, that what comes next could still be different. That we are not finished yet. Bone and sterling silver inlay. (Sold))
"Hope." - 2021 Hope is the most stubborn thing we carry. It persists against evidence, against experience, against every reason we have given it to die. It is not naivety — it is an act of defiance. To hope is to insist, quietly and against all odds, that what comes next could still be different. That we are not finished yet. Bone and sterling silver inlay. (Sold))
"Empathy" - 2019 To feel what another feels. To let their weight become briefly yours. Of all the things we carry in our bones, empathy is the most quietly radical — because it requires us to step outside ourselves completely, to reach toward a life that is not our own and say I understand. I am with you. It is the one thing, above all others, that makes us human. And the one thing we most often withhold. Bone and sterling silver inlay. $2,000 (available)
"Faith" - 2021 Faith is not certainty. It never was. It is the decision to move forward anyway — toward something unseen, unproven, not yet realized. To trust the reach before you know what your hand will find. It lives in the bone because it has to. Because if it lived anywhere closer to the surface, the first cold wind would take it. Bone and sterling silver inlay $2,000 (available)
"Trust" - 2022 Trust is the most vulnerable thing we carry. It cannot exist alone — it requires another person, another hand reaching back. To trust is to make yourself available to being hurt, to open something that could so easily be broken. We guard it carefully, sometimes too carefully, locking it so deep in the bone that it never sees light. But without it, we cannot truly reach anyone. And no one can truly reach us. Bone and sterling silver inlay. $2,000 (available)
"Joy." -2020 Joy is not happiness. Happiness is a response to circumstance. Joy is something older, deeper, more defiant than that — it lives in the bone regardless of what is happening at the surface. It does not require good news or easy days. It requires only the willingness to feel it, to let it rise, to stop apologizing for carrying something bright inside you while the world is heavy. Joy is not a luxury. It is an act of resistance. Bone and sterling silver inlay.(Sold)
"Desire." -2019 Desire is the most honest thing we carry. It does not perform, does not justify itself, does not wait for permission. It simply is — raw and insistent, older than language, deeper than reason. We have been taught to distrust it, to manage it, to keep it buried where it cannot embarrass us. But desire is also the engine of everything we have ever reached toward — every love, every creation, every moment of courage that began with a single, ungovernable want. To deny it entirely is to stop reaching altogether. Bone and sterling silver inlay. $2,000 (available)