the beacon collection:
NOVA

tablet, stylus, Ethereum
32 digital paintings
2019, 2020

As a child, I obsessed over the time dilation spacefarers faced. I fantasized about zipping away to escape problems and seek adventure. But I struggled with the guilt of that desire — to do so would mean that I’d never see those I knew and loved again, as they would die while time invariably slowed to a crawl in my spaceship. Nothing I learned from stacks of Popular Science could bend spacetime on my behalf so that I could one day shamelessly depart for new worlds.

The nova series is inspired by the eruption of stars in space. The immutable medium is juxtaposed against rapid renditions of fundamentally transient astronomical events. Each hand-drawn painting was finalized immediately; there are no revisions in space. Supernovae mark the end of life for a celestial body, as a star fades from existence, or collapses into a blackhole, accompanied by energy visible 100 light-years away. Far away observers may witness traces of a supernova a century later, just as these digital expressions might outlast any beholder.