On view at in "The Ark,"curated by Eric Fischl, at The Church Sag Harbor, June 21-September 1, 2025. I will be giving a talk about this piece and my process at The Church on Sunday, August 17 at noon.

Restless Things

For years I have been making porcelain portraits of the dead winged beings in my collection, but I have focused primarily on birds. To me, birds are everything—they’re delicate and vulnerable and resilient and creative. They’re mysterious geniuses and practical survivors. They’re everything I experience in a day—awe and exuberance and the yearning to pay tribute to the tragic and the quietly heroic.

After years of making houseflies and owls and dragonflies and sparrows, I assembled this piece last fall, during the annual butterfly migration, where every year I re-discover the monarchs waggling their way down our beaches en route from Canada to Mexico. I find great optimism in their seemingly random flight pattern that has successfully perpetuated the species for centuries. Although I sculpt the subjects in the position they were found (lying down), I realized I wanted the butterflies to be upright—as though live ones were alighting among the dead birds and insects. I was overcome by a feeling of spirituality and hope—that what’s essential in all of us corporeal beings would somehow be carried forward safely, a kind of transcendence.