Ode to Sky
Installation / Activated Sculpture
Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia, United States

Ode to Sky is a sculptural elegy to the artist’s first Queer love, examining intimacy, memory, and the sustaining force of nonconforming connection. The work presents love as something that actively shapes a person.something that isn’t confined to a single moment, but keeps shaping and reshaping the body over time

Made from a reflective photograph of the sky above the subject’s childhood home, along with mirror, water, resin, cement, and a surveillance dome, the installation becomes a kind of vessel, echoing a sidewalk puddle, a well, and even a place of quiet devotion. The structure invites the viewer to look into it, confronting the image of the sky and their own reflection. A domed mirror above separates the body from the image, introducing distance and the longing for a former love.

Brought to life through performance, the artist slowly pours water into the vessel, turning it into a quiet offering. The gesture is an act of care and recognition. It brings attention to memory being something still here, yet always in motion, subtly changing over time.

The relationship with Sky marked the artist’s first encounter with unearthly expectations and queer abundance, illuminating a previously unrecognized dimension of the superego. Ode to Sky symbolizes both the validity and vulnerability of queer love and admiration, as well as the perceived presence of the holy spirit during that period of the artist’s life.

Within Three Tries: The Beginning, the work operates within a system where sculptural elements parallel both the Stations of the Cross and Sigmund Freud’s psychosexual stages. Ode to Sky corresponds to the genital stage (puberty to adulthood), a phase associated with mature intimacy, relational development, and the integration of desire within social and emotional frameworks. The inclusion of surveillance and reflective elements activates the function of the superego, situating the work within a structure of internalized observation, judgment, and self-awareness.

Ode to Sky positions love as a world-making force, where intimacy persists as reflection, memory, and ongoing influence, even when it is never fully named.

Photography by Getsay.