relating to the infinite

lake

The unlimited potentiality of water is always defined by the material reality of its surroundings.

When we define a body of water, we omit its endless states of potential being.Definition makes us forget how easily we can scoop sea into glass.But it’s hard to relate to the infinite.We seek to communicate the singularity of our experience, and it’s the limits and the peculiarities of a thing that give it character. The more unique, the more novel, a thing is, the more it will catch our eye.

River, sea, pond, dew — a body of water organizes its particles in accordance with the climate and the shape of its vessel.

I was lucky to have a childhood where access to water was abundant. around me. gradations of light transfixed by the shimmering immersed in water, I found myself and trips to the beach. Whenever I wasand I remember summers full of swimming lessons I grew up on an island in California. My dad was a surfer, As I set out on my visual studies, I found myself thinking of all the bodies of water I have coexisted with.

And the sharp sparkling clarity of a pool on a scorching day is so different from the silky darkness of a redwood forest’s river.I used to imagine I was a being of water, some aquatic nymph that could receive messages from the tide.

I had a book of fairytales that contained an old version of The Little Mermaid; in the end, the soulless mermaid dies and dissolves into seafoam.

I thought about what it would be like to have water as my body.I would lap at an overcast shore until the end of time, the hollow sound of waves my only language.The image stuck in my mind as a continual fixture; somehow, it seemed like a plausible fate for my own life.

What would it mean to be an infinite nothingness?

Like water, the internet also exists both in its reality and its potential.The internet could be any form of data shared by a protocol — infinite shapes wait to be conjured from the nothingness of cyberspace.COMPOST, a publication existing on the distributed web, seems like a step into a different virtual reality — an uncommon form that makes you dream of things that could be.

Yet we rarely look beyond the internet’s common forms: a web page, an email, a TikTok.

My drawings are only a series of lines, placed one by one — a tangible image slowly created out of intangible thoughts.Once a drawing is complete, I’m already thinking of the next. The drive to imagine what hasn’t yet been made, I think, is inherent in all of us.It’s hard to imagine a more worthwhile pursuit than one that takes us further and further into the unknown, forever striving to bring to reality what we see just up ahead.

Is there anything more fascinating than the process of creation? Holding an idea in your mind and taking the steps necessary to see it to fruition?

With this in mind, I began my sketches for COMPOST. I like to use simple ways of working, and I wanted to focus on light and shadow, so everything was drawn with an 0.7 mechanical pencil in a Rhodia sketchbook. I love texture, but my drawings seem to turn out better on smooth paper. Sometimes I add digital texture; lately my favorite method is using a scan of cold pressed watercolor paper as a Multiply layer.