I left Albuquerque just as I was figuring out my style. The cloudless Southwest sun moves around on seamless stucco all day, making every shadow something to discover. It was my dance partner: each of us in the right place at the right time.

Boston does not work this way, and after a few months, I gave up. After a few years I landed indoors. Museum spotlights make weird and lovely shadow-shapes, but they don’t move, so there’s nothing special about finding one.

In 2024 I moved to the Bay Area. In some ways, it felt like a homecoming. Clear skies, hard sun, even some stucco.

But you can never go home again, not really. The way I learned to see in the Northeast is part of me now. It’s a scar, and like all scars, it tells my story.