From a Coin (2005-present)

This series began with a poem, To a Coin, by Jorge Luis Borges in which he imagines the fate of a coin thrown into the ocean. The pieces are meditations on the history of gold and explorations into what gold is capable of. I think of these pieces as interventions into the coins. I don’t alloy them. The wings on the eagle are still visible. The amount of gold is constant. The pieces balance somewhere between currency and adornment. The moments when gold is worn feel like small interferences in a vast material history, and these objects, like Borges’ coin, tell stories.

a coin that glinted and winked out in the muddy water,

a gleam of light swallowed by time and darkness.

I felt I had committed an irrevocable act,

adding to the history of the planet

two endless series, parallel, possibly infinite:

my own destiny, formed from anxieties, love and futile upsets

and that of that metal disk

carried away by the water to the quiet depths