Aurora has been part of my family’s story for generations, making it part of mine before I was even a thought. It is a small place, but one that has always felt impossibly full. The lake, the landmarks, the church, the shops, the cousins coming and going, the summer evenings on a back porch, the stories of my grandparents living among the same streets, and the ordinary things that become remarkable simply because we have loved them for long enough.

Artifact of Aurora began as my way of paying attention to those things. I started painting the places I knew by heart and collecting the photographs, objects, stories, and memories that surrounded them. What began with my own relationship to home slowly became something larger: an archive of a place as it is remembered by the people who have belonged to it.

The work takes many forms because memory does too. Paintings sit beside photographs, family stories, found objects, and pieces made to be used or passed along. Some preserve places that are still here. Others hold onto people, traditions, and versions of Aurora that exist now mostly in memory.

Artifact of Aurora is not an attempt to preserve the town exactly as it was. It is about preserving what it has meant to those who have lived there and loved it.

Rooted in Aurora. Carried forward.