this might be beautiful someday (Wildfires in Washington State, August 2023)
like seeing it for the first time (M57 image from the JWST, August 2023)
Pigment prints mounted to wood. 2025.
The images in the two text phrases depict roughly simultaneous events. Frequent and widespread wildfires are a common occurrence in the west, and the one depicted in the phrase ‘this might be beautiful someday’ occurred in Washington State in August of 2023. At this time the James Webb Space Telescope took its first image of M57, known as the Ring Nebula, which is the remains of a dying star. This incredible image of an object 2000 light years away is depicted in the phrase ‘like seeing it for the first time’. Eventually, our sun will meet a similar fate through natural processes, and will most likely engulf the earth. Although this won’t occur for billions of years, this fiery decimation seems much closer as we witness the environmental impacts of human actions.