“When you see what’s present around you for the first time, you start to realize how astonishing it all is.”
— Rick Rubin from The Creative Act: A Way of Being
“Exoplanets” is an extension of “Tiny Cosmologies” and looks at the emotional landscape of life’s transient nature through the metaphor of melting ice cubes. The images become physical evidence of the passage of time and the truth of impermanence.
The interior of each cube contains a hidden world of bubbles, voids, cracks, and patterns. These ephemeral worlds can evoke the wonder of the chance encounter as well as the varying human reactions to change and impermanence. The process of making the ice in various shapes and watching it transform as I photographed became an adventure. The melting rectangles, squares, and spheres would spin and ride on the puddles of liquid water they created. Rivulets would stream down the outside. Air pockets would fill with tiny bubbles as if breathing. Cubes sitting next to each other would fuse into new realms. I am fascinated by the melting process, the variation each small cube reveals, and the emotions these discoveries elicit.
With this work, I expand on the Buddhist idea that moments of beauty and clarity intersect moments of chaos and uncertainty.