When people ask to see my work, they almost always ask to see my studio.

It makes sense. The studio is where every piece begins. It's where materials are tested, ideas fail and are rebuilt, and a finished work slowly emerges through hundreds of small decisions. There is something inherently satisfying about seeing where art is made. For a long time, I thought that was the most interesting part of an artwork's story. I don't anymore.

Last night I was making my way through the house, turning on lamps as the daylight faded. It was an ordinary evening, one I've lived hundreds of times before. I wasn't thinking about work or planning future projects. I was simply moving through my home.

As the lamp in my living room came on, the light caught Shedding.

The sculpture has lived there since I moved to Oregon. First damaged, then repaired, it has slowly become part of the rhythm of my home. I pass it every day. Somewhere along the way it stopped feeling like something I had made and simply became part of the room. It existed alongside the plants, the books, and the furniture in much the same way they all exist together, familiar enough that I rarely gave it more than a passing glance.

Until last night.

The simple light of my living room lamp revealed details I hadn't noticed in months. Shadows settled into places I couldn't remember seeing before. For just a moment, it didn't feel like a sculpture I had made. It felt like something I had just encountered.

Nothing about the sculpture had changed. Still, I was captivated. I stood there for a moment, quietly taking it in. Then, when the moment passed, I smiled to myself and continued on with my evening.

We often talk about artwork as though it has a single defining moment. We make it, exhibit it, collect it, install it, and then move on to the next thing. But that isn't really how we experience art. When artwork first enters a home, it naturally draws our attention. We carefully decide where it belongs, noticing how it changes a room and how the light moves across it throughout the day. Over time, however, something quieter begins to happen. The artwork stops introducing itself and simply becomes part of the life unfolding around it.

The plants continue to grow. Furniture is rearranged. Books find new places on the shelf. The routines of the people living there change almost without them noticing. Through all of it, the artwork remains. Not frozen in time, but quietly accumulating the experiences of the space around it.

I think that's why I've started photographing my work differently.

Studio photographs are important. They document the artwork clearly and without distraction. They allow galleries, curators, and interior designers to imagine a piece within another space. Individual collectors often ask a different question than designers do. They aren't simply wondering whether a piece will fit on a particular wall. They're wondering what it might feel like to live with it. It's a question I found myself thinking about again while participating in ArtSeen Magazine, where the conversation extended beyond individual works to the experience of living with and looking at art.

Individual collectors often ask a different question than designers do. They aren't simply wondering whether a piece will fit on a particular wall. They're imagining what it might feel like to share their life with it. A studio photograph can show the artwork. A photograph made years later can show the relationship.

Those are the images I find myself drawn to now. A sculpture beside the plant that has slowly grown around it. A photograph catching the same morning light someone sees while making coffee. Artwork that no longer feels staged or newly installed, but simply belongs. Those images aren't documenting the making of the work. They're documenting everything that happened after.

Looking back, I realize many of the books that have remained on my shelves explore this same idea from different directions. Some are about perception. Others are about light, space, or the environments we inhabit. None of them are really about decorating. They're about paying attention.

Maybe living with art asks the same thing of us.

Most days it asks nothing at all. It simply shares our space while life quietly unfolds around it. Then, without warning, an ordinary moment becomes something else. We notice the way evening light settles across a familiar surface. We stop. We look again.

And for reasons we may never fully understand, something we've lived beside for years feels entirely new.