Nessun Dorma, salvaged wood PETL68

• Reclaimed wood, paint
• 36 x 36 inches

Nessun Dorma was created during the making of this solo exhibition and a return to the city tied to many of my earliest artistic memories. While working on the piece, I kept thinking about being ten years old during the 1976 Bicentennial and the Betsy Ross circle of thirteen stars. I was also thinking deeply about a childhood pen pal from Malaysia whom I first connected with around that same age. Over decades, our friendship survived college, distance, marriages, families, and changing lives. Through her photographs and stories, she shared her travels to mosques throughout Malaysia and the Middle East. Seeing those spaces through her eyes — their geometry, repetition, light, and sense of devotion — deeply influenced the visual language of this work. After the recent death of her husband, I found myself reflecting on grief, endurance, and the ways human connection persists across time and culture. The structure draws simultaneously from Islamic geometric patterning and the circular star formation of the 1776 Betsy Ross flag, allowing those visual histories to exist together within a single field.

While making it, I listened repeatedly to Puccini’s Turandot, returning to the soundscape of my childhood art classes. The aria “Nessun Dorma,” suspended in anticipation before dawn, became inseparable from the rhythm and emotional atmosphere of the work. Built from salvaged painted wood, the piece became an act of return — to Philadelphia, to childhood, to friendship, and to the belief that human connection can endure even when hope feels fragile.