"Birth"
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!"
— from "Ode" by Wordsworth
When I exhibited this piece for the first time a friend, who was pregnant at the time, said that this was just how she had been imagining her child. As the tiny body was growing in her womb, from somewhere a soul was coming ever nearer. With each new development of the form, the soul was drawn closer and closer. She was eagerly waiting for her child to come, like this, to the little body she was creating.
For me, the imensity, breathtaking wonder, and exquisite beauty of the universe represent visually that place beyond the universe, beyond the limits of time and space, where God resides in his pure, unqualified, infinity. The home of God is all around us, within us, and beyond all things we can imagine.