Meditations in Form

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“Instead of making a picture that was an interpretation of a thing seen, or a picture of invented content, I found an object and ‘presented’ it as itself alone.” 

Ellsworth Kelly

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I CAN is a year-long meditation on transformation, impermanence, and the overlooked beauty of the everyday. Inspired by Ellsworth Kelly’s practice of seeing beyond the object, the project began with a shift in perception: noticing crumpled aluminum cans on the street not as debris, but as singular forms shaped by time, pressure, and chance.

Once part of a uniform mass, each can becomes unique through use and impact. Bent, crushed, and weathered, these discarded objects function as quiet metaphors for the human experience—records of resilience, vulnerability, and individuality. In I CAN, imperfection is not treated as flaw, but as evidence of lived presence.

Through daily walks and sustained attention, a single can is selected each day as the point of departure for one artwork. The resulting works are 24 x 24 inch digital pigment prints—meditative responses that translate observation into form. Each piece is produced as a singular work, hand-signed and never repeated.

The project draws from the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi, embracing impermanence, incompletion, and modesty. Over the course of 365 days, I CAN functions simultaneously as practice and archive: a discipline of noticing, a record of time, and a quiet ritual of care.

At its conclusion, the project will be gathered into a book titled I CAN: Meditations in Form—a testament to persistence, attention, and the cumulative power of saying, each day, I CAN.