The Milky Way (Folded) The Very Old and Very Young

This ongoing series draws from historical celestial charts that map the Milky Way in segmented sections, each designed to render greater detail. I trace these star fields in white ink, reassembling them into a continuous, luminous band that stretches across the surface.

Moving through this field are clusters of imagery drawn from antique natural history illustrations: a dense column of fishes, an expanding field of eggs, a writhing array of snakes, and dispersed clouds of insects. These forms, reprinted on washi and mounted on handmade Japanese paper, drift across the Milky Way like constellations of earthly life.

The work brings into proximity vastly different scales of time and attention—the incomprehensible age of the stars alongside the brief, often overlooked lives of terrestrial beings. The same impulse that charted the heavens also catalogued, classified, and often objectified life on earth. Here, those systems of looking intersect.

Suspended within the galactic field, these creatures are neither specimens nor symbols alone. They suggest a fragile continuity: life moving through time, largely unseen, yet no less vital.

Each work measures approximately 24 × 44 inches. The series is ongoing.