Work in progress · Limewood

To work with wood is to work with loss.

This hand-carved project is a response to grief, both personal and historical. Inspired by the lost tradition of Eastern European Torah arks, it takes as its starting point the Ark of Zelva (1849–50), one of many extraordinary arks destroyed during the Nazi invasion. Today, these remarkable works survive only in black-and-white archival photographs.

This project seeks to reconstruct more than an object. It is an attempt to reclaim a lost artform and give tangible form to what history tried to erase. Through the act of making, it explores how grief might be transformed: how absence becomes presence, and how memory can be carved into being.

The motifs of animals and intertwining vines echo childhood walks with my father: the smell of wild garlic, the hush of trees, and the quiet sense of awe that shaped my earliest understanding of the world.

The unfinished state of the carving reflects the ongoing nature of grief, and the slow weaving together of past and present. This reconstruction is not a final word, but a work in mid-sentence — a gesture of continuity, a bridge between destruction and creation.

Ark of Zelva