Oceans of Time, salvaged wood PETL72

• Reclaimed wood
• 36 x 36 inches

Oceans of Time emerged while listening to long-form histories of Romania and Eastern Europe during the making of this exhibition. Of Eastern European heritage, I found myself thinking about the immigrant experience — passage, separation, risk, arrival, inheritance.

Constructed from salvaged painted wood, the work assembles worn surfaces and shifting geometric structures into a field that suggests currents, maps, quilt patterns, and architectural remnants. Pieces move in and out of alignment, echoing the instability and reconstruction that often shape migration across generations.

The title comes from a line in Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula — “I have crossed oceans of time to find you.” Beyond its romantic meaning, the phrase stayed with me as a meditation on migration, memory, ancestry, and the enduring pull of connection across distance and generations. The title reflects both physical passage and the accumulation of time — oceans crossed, histories carried forward, enduring traces left behind. The work became a meditation on how identity survives through movement, adaptation, memory, and repair.