In the Dust and the Mess: Where the Real Work Lives

I want to show you something.

Something you might not want to see.

No — it isn’t a missing finger. Though I once met a stone carver who had lost one, and I didn’t dare ask how. This is something quieter, less dramatic, but far more honest.

It’s the mess.

The cluttered table. The tools strewn about. The dust that settles into everything. The small, unseen hollows where life actually happens. We like to present the world as polished and resolved, but most of existence is shaped underground — like moles living half our lives in shadow, waiting for moments of light.

What I’m working on now was born from salvaged material and hard-earned experience. No one taught me this directly. It came from trial, error, patience, and repetition. The tools around me tell that story: crowded, worn, occasionally damaged. Just the other day, I forgot to unplug a tool. My mask caught the cord, the grinder fell, and my best die grinder bit was knocked out of balance. A small mistake, but a reminder of how tight and compressed this life can be.

We are surrounded by images of pristine studios and effortless mastery. But that isn’t the full truth — and it certainly isn’t mine. I share this mess to honor what’s usually hidden: the raw, unfettered side of making. The side that doesn’t photograph well, but holds the real substance.

The riches of the earth are found in the earth itself. Stone comes from pressure, time, and burial. I’m obsessed with dressing the surface of stone just enough to reveal what’s already there — to let these animal forms speak. Their quiet intelligence, their watchfulness, feel like echoes of something ancient. A primordial mind we’re still connected to, whether we acknowledge it or not.

So bask in the mess.

This is where refinement begins. Life works the same way. We are shaped by compression, by friction, by cycles of breakdown and rebuilding. Coal doesn’t apologize for the darkness it comes from — and neither should we.

One day, perhaps, we’ll be brilliant as the sun.

For now, the dust and ashes are more than enough to work with.