To the dark and the endless sky

To the dark, and the endless sky
2026

Vintage answering machine,
Water,
Pedestal,
Pump

Build state:
Conceptual

I remember leaving a message on an answering machine for the first time. It was awkward. Speaking to a machine. But there were times when it was better to leave a message than talk to the person you were calling. I had a similar machine growing up. There was always the excitement of coming home to see if anyone had left a message. The idea that someone was thinking of you.

I was talking to a friend about losing my dad and working on this series. She shared her experience of loss, and it centered on this device. She couldn't bring herself to check the answering machine. She knew what might be on it. We are never ready to know.

I've been thinking about that moment... the time when two possibilities can exist...

Water moves through this machine the way grief does... not once, but continuously. It finds every opening... every pore. It doesn't drain... it returns.

The answering machine was designed to hold a voice. One-sided conversations. The water gets in, or gets out, and the boundary between the message and the world has dissolved. What was meant to be preserved becomes something else.

I think about baptism... about tears... about the fact that water is the first thing we require and the thing that outlasts us. It doesn't stop because we need it to.

Build process notes

Top, Index