Last Breath
Silkscreen glass enamel on hand rolled glass, blown glass, and tin glazed ceramic, painted wood.
30 x 16 x 16 inches
2017

Detail of Last Breath
Silkscreen glass enamel on hand rolled glass, blown glass, and tin glazed ceramic, painted wood.
30 x 16 x 16 inches
2017

Waiting to Exhale

Last Breath

“The story goes that in 44 BC in Rome, Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of his own senators, crumpling to the floor with a final gasp. This last breath contained around 25 sextillion (that’s 25 followed by 21 zeroes) air molecules, which would have spread around the globe within a couple of years. A breath seems like such a small thing compared to the Earth’s atmosphere, but remarkably, if you do the math, you’ll find that roughly one molecule of Caesar’s air will appear in your next breath.”[1]

Reading this essay stemming from the book “Caesar’s Last Breath” by Sam Kean, led me to think about my recently departed mother’s last breath. I had been in the room with her when she passed. My siblings and I had all taken turns keeping vigil in her home. It was a particularly dreadful experience bearing witness. I was heartbroken and simultaneously relieved for her. So, this work was created during a scholarship residency at Urban Glass in New York City where I began printing portraits with glass powder in a medium through silkscreen and then melting the printed glass into hand rolled glass sheets. A blown glass teardrop captures that last breath held up by a series of ceramic forms, culminating in an altar form reminiscent of the make shift shrines and displays I had grown accustomed to in the home I was raised in.

[1] Lloyd, James. Are we really breathing Caesar’s last breath?, Science Focus, BBC, 13 July 2017