Artist Statement I am captivated by nineteenth-century photographic methods, which offer a renewed lens through which I consider time and my place within it. Though photography’s origins are relatively recent in the broader arc of art history, much of its material culture is already fading. As the medium evolves toward impermanence and with time speeding ahead, I realize that I as an artist have not been left behind in the past. Instead, I actively modernize historic techniques, integrating digital-age technologies alongside sculptural blown glass to challenge and expand the boundaries of what photography can be. Much of the content of my work is driven by a fear of forgetting; a feeling intimately tied to photography’s rise as an archival tool throughout the 1800s. The desire to document came with the need to preserve memory, especially familial and vernacular objects. For me, experiencing my grandfather going through dementia affected me emotionally as a maker. As his condition worsened, what he feared most was being alone at any moment. His fear associated with his illness evolved into my fascination with the quiet, calm moments punctuating our chaotic world. Recording these as reflections of times I wish to not forget. As these thoughts linger throughout daily life, I want my sculptural photographic work to communicate the melancholic moment my grandfather experienced from being alone, while still expressing my own sense of beauty in finding solitude through nature. My passion for photographic processes began with a fascination with light as a creative tool. The etymology of photography—“to paint with light”—continues to guide my practice. Long before handheld devices and digital sensors, light was a tactile force capable of sculpting form and emotion. In the darkroom, I harness this phenomenon to create rich tonal prints that carry the physicality of touch, like the fingerprints left by a ceramicist. For me, light is what gives my photographic compositions visual weight. This interplay between light and materiality led me to glass—a medium that embodies translucence, memory, and fragility. Using the 1851 Wet Plate Collodion process, I embed images onto clear glass, transforming it into both lens and canvas. Its historical resonance and optical properties allow me to collapse time, layering past and present in a single gesture. Clear glass, in particular, offers versatility and symbolic depth, serving as a vessel for remembrance and reflection by retaining all marks and hesitations left behind by the maker. I utilize these techniques and perspectives on the intimate way of going throughout my own life while witnessing a relative slowly losing their sense of self to age. Through documenting objects and landscapes, I explore how physical spaces holds belonging, serving as tender, intentional records of familial experiences with dementia. In this series, I reimagine photography not only as documentation but as a tactile, sculptural encounter with memory and presence.