For a long time, I’ve been struck by the intricate and sometimes beautiful shapes of foam inserts. They have been purposefully designed to coddle electronics, appliances and other delicate items as they are transported across many miles by plane and boat. Made out of polystyrene, polyethylene, or other foams, they withstand the abuse of UPS and Fed Ex drivers who toss them in and out of trucks. Only existing for the objects they’re built to protect, they are merely shells to be cast aside once the valued item is removed.

For this series, I have taken these non-objects, these things-built-for-things and elevated them into objects in themselves. Divorced from their original purpose, they have been saved from their fate as trash and reborn as bricks, blocks, arches and slabs.

Everyday “trophies,” keepsakes from street wandering, are memorialized on panels that respond to their shape and color. The platform for display mimics the relic, not only elevating it to the status of regarded souvenir, but deferentially bending to its form.

Maps and instructions—directions to unknown places without using words.

Sidewalk or gutter detritus, flattened, usually by cars, sometimes mangled or ripped into parts—these are mysterious remnants that suggest industry, parties or daily domestic life. They become markers of life in a walkable city, where smashed paper wrappers can be compared to the insect-eaten leaves you find on a forest path or tide-wrecked sand dollars on a beach.

In this series, I contemplate discarded objects in my immediate urban environment as archaeological finds collected in the distant future. Discards are re-imagined as ceremonial objects, ritualistic tools and protective talismans—the kinds of objects that people construct and utilize in times of affliction to call upon higher powers. I explore the universality, not just geographically, but temporally, of people trying to summon or ward off imaginary forces with physical aids.

The passage of time confers value upon the mundane objects of ancient cultures. In the same way, our current-day detritus might hold the same interest for future civilizations. Taking this idea a step further, I artificially apply order, structure and ritualistic meaning to objects that have none, attempting to impose a sense of importance onto valueless shards.

In the years ahead, a time of limited resources might drive the construction of such makeshift contraptions in a desperate attempt to reach for cosmological answers—as people use whatever they can find to activate a connection between the terrestrial and celestial.