Still Evening On, salvaged wood PETL70

• Reclaimed wood
• 36 x 36 inches

Still Evening On takes its title from a line in Paradise Lost, evoking the suspended stillness before paradise shifts irrevocably toward consciousness, knowledge, and human complexity. What stayed with me over time was not simply the story of the fall, but Eve’s emotional isolation — the sense of being outside the center of knowledge and conversation, longing to participate fully in human experience. I found myself questioning whether the desire for consciousness, feeling, and independent thought was truly a transgression, or simply the beginning of what it means to be human.

Created during the 250th anniversary of the United States and Philadelphia, the work quietly reconsiders familiar American symbols through a more vulnerable and uncertain lens. Centered within a dark surrounding field, the composition is anchored by a single illuminated star form held within multiple framing structures. Built from salvaged painted wood, the piece balances geometry and instability, order and disruption. The palette reinterprets patriotic color through deep midnight blues, softened pinks, ivory, cadet gray, army green, and acid yellow — colors intended to hold tenderness, unease, memory, and contradiction simultaneously. A small imperfect star near the lower edge became especially important to me as a point of entry and instability within the larger system, suggesting that nothing human — or national — is ever entirely fixed, absolute, or complete.