CAN-verse
A sculptural project about fragility, memory, and the invisible weight of things that go unsaid. Porcelain cans — crushed, altered, or sprouting — become silent vessels of grief, survival, and care.
CAN-verse reimagines aluminum cans — a symbol of disposability and mass production — as something delicate, emotional, and worth remembering. Born in the wake of war and creative paralysis, this project turns packaging into a language of healing. Each can, made of porcelain, reflects personal rupture and collective memory.
This project began not as a concept, but as a reaction — to rupture, to silence. I didn’t plan it. I felt it.
I’ve spent most of my professional life designing packaging — objects meant to be functional, beautiful, and forgettable. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, I felt everything I had built collapse. I couldn’t design anymore. I couldn’t speak.
In that silence, I made a crushed can out of clay. It felt truer than anything I had done before.
Since then, CAN-verse has grown into a sculptural diary — a personal and political meditation on absence, care, and transformation. Cans — fired, unfired, sprouting, collapsing — hold traces of what we discard, avoid, or mourn.
This project asks: What do we preserve, and what do we abandon? What grows in the cracks?
The Four Series
1. Monumental installation
A future installation of 1,000 cans, each hand-cut at the same angle.
Fifty pieces completed.
A quiet ritual of repetition, grief, and holding space.
2. Living sculptures
Unfired cans planted with seeds.
Some sprout. Some collapse. Some grow mold.
Memory becomes alive — and unpredictable.
3. Spring-connected ready-mades
Two halves joined by tension — literally.
Clay + springs = a delicate absurdity.
Balancing collapse and resilience.
4. Portrait cans
No faces, but you see someone.
These works resemble relics, or ruins.
Each one carries the weight of someone unnamed.
Materials
High-fired clay, glaze, white gold luster, high-temperature wire, seeds, unfired slip clay.
Some sculptures are made to last. Others made to disappear.
The project embraces low-impact, sustainable materials.
Nothing is wasted. Even decay becomes part of the process.
Sustainability
CAN-verse embraces low-impact practices.
Clay is reused. Nothing is glazed unnecessarily.
Growth and decay are not only visual metaphors — they are built into the work’s biology.
Current status + call to action
100+ sculptures created between 2022–2025
First exhibition: Jersey City, Project Studios, October 2024
Currently working in Jersey City, NJ
Now, the project is growing:
A large-scale installation (1,000+ pieces)
Living sculptures with time-based change
Potential participatory or site-specific iterations
I’m currently seeking:
Funding for materials, studio access, and production
Curators, institutions, or collectives interested in exhibiting the work
Long-term partners to co-develop the project’s next phase