The Unpetitioned Grace

A young girl sleeps. The scene is domestic — a bed, white pillows, the specific ordered softness of a childhood bedroom at night. She is curled on her side, hands tucked beneath her cheek in the instinctive self-cradling of complete surrender to sleep. She is smiling. In her sleep. The specific, warm, private smile of someone who is in the middle of something wonderful.

Above her — descending through a ceiling that has become sky, through stars and soft golden light — a hand. Enormous. Luminous. Impossibly gentle. A presence descending toward her with the specific tenderness of something that has been watching over her for her entire life and has chosen this moment — this sleeping, smiling, completely unguarded moment — to make itself visible.

She does not know it is there. That is the entire artwork. The keeping does not require her belief. It does not require her cooperation. It does not require her petition. The hand descended before the petition was formed. Before the fear was named. Before the question was asked.

This is the final artwork of the first three collections because it is the answer to every question the collection asks. Twelve artworks. Three collections. One sentence: You are enough. You matter. You have never been alone. The hand was always there.