“Lie With Me and Watch the Stars Die” is an exhibition composed of current and past—as well as found—artworks. Many of these pieces reflect some of my core creative interests as an artist: my occupation as an art museum security guard, my family, and an ever-present fascination with found objects and textiles that I love to collect and adopt. At first glance, these works could be seen as unrelated, but actually they are deeply connected for me—just as a minute becomes part of an hour and then an hour belongs to a day.

In January, I started working on my first new piece for this show, which helped me come up with the title for it. I had been saving a very old, worn and discolored white bedsheet I had slept on for years. I started by cutting it up randomly into small squares, then sewing them back together. It created a tile-like effect that felt very fragile, like a weak ghost. I wanted it to be the size of a twin sheet to have the feel of a single person. As I was resewing the pieces of the sheet, the words “lie with me” came to mind. I wanted to sew these three words onto a sheet, and decided to cut the letters from a hospital gown my father had worn while recovering in the hospital last November. After sewing these three words, however, I realized it wasn’t enough; I had to choose which of the two meanings of the word “lie” I wished to convey but loved the fact that it had two very different meanings even though it was spelled the same way for both. So I thought about it some more, racking my brains for the ending, and somehow the full phrase eventually came to me. At first I was worried it might be too hokey or sad. The truth is, though, I don’t know if I’ll ever get tired of referencing stars but nevertheless still feel leery about their possible overuse. Yet the sentence grew on me. And I felt it wasn’t just sad, because stars have a long life. Maybe “Lie With Me and Watch the Stars Die” could even be romantic too. Whatever the case, I hope people will find their own interpretation. But an important thing in all of this is that I found a way of addressing what I had been reflecting on a lot lately: intimacy, aging, illness, and death. Human frailties that we all inevitably meet, have met, or caring for a loved one in the midst of them. This central piece is accompanied by echoing works in the show that open up a larger dialogue on the human condition and relationships, resilience and vulnerability, as well as humor and sadness. The needle and pen. Driftwood and the tin can. Fearless is the imagination on fire.