The deer skull I found behind the barn stayed with me for years. I hid it in

The deer skull I found behind the barn stayed with me for years. I hid it in the loft of the shed like a secret altar.

I didn’t think of it as morbid. I thought of it as mysterious. Beautiful. Sacred.

It was the first object I ever imbued with meaning.

When I work with bones in my art now — microfauna drawings, animist motifs, symbolic relics — I’m still channeling that first skull. That first recognition that death has its own beauty.

The world was alive, even in its remains.