What is the meaning behind this body of work?
A trace through the formal language, core qualities, and existential arc of transformation
Your work operates as a form of existential archaeology. Through reclaimed wood, you're excavating meaning from material that consumer culture has discarded, transforming waste into vessels for agency and community.
The formal elements you've developed—spiral, void, intentional cut—aren't decorative choices but philosophical statements. The spiral embodies agency itself, the active choice to shape rather than be shaped. The void represents creation as counter-practice, the deliberate act of making space where none existed. Your intentional cuts assert human will against the randomness of decay and abandonment.
This isn't simply about sustainability or craft. You've identified four core qualities that drive the work: becomingness, autonomy, resistance, and reclamation. These operate as both aesthetic principles and existential necessities. Each piece becomes a meditation on the arc from "consumption as salve" to "creation as counter-practice"—from being acted upon to acting.
Your materials carry this philosophy in their grain. Reclaimed wood arrives with its own history of use and abandonment. By transforming it, you're modeling a path from "sick and half dead to shining powerful being." The wood's journey mirrors the human journey you're articulating: discarded material gaining new purpose through intentional intervention.
The tension between natural elements (natural edge, natural inclusion) and intentional ones (intentional cut, base) maps directly onto your understanding of identity as "agency plus community." The natural inclusions and edges represent what we're given—our raw material. The cuts and bases represent what we choose to make of that material, both individually and in relation to others.
Your graph database approach reflects this same philosophy. Instead of creating a traditional portfolio that presents finished objects for consumption, you've built a queryable practice that invites active engagement. The work exists both as physical sculptures and digital traces, embodying your belief that meaning emerges through relationship and exploration rather than passive viewing.
This body of work argues that creation itself is a form of resistance—resistance to consumer passivity, to accepting predetermined roles, to the idea that we must remain whatever we were made into. Each piece demonstrates that transformation is possible, that agency can be carved from the most unpromising materials, that what appears finished or discarded can become the foundation for something entirely new.
Graph Query Results
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"id": "2026-01-31-vocabulary",
"summary": "Defined and refined the formal elements of the visual language: spiral, groove, void, natural edge, intentional cut, open/closed form, base, natural inclusion. Established their meanings and how they combine.",
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"id": "2026-01-31-piece-analysis",
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"timestamp": "2026-02-09T17:35:40.174Z"
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