Stephanie Lane Gage
𖤓 Artist
Work
Archive
For Sale

✿ About
✦ CV

The Hourglass

2023
screenprint, decoupage Risograph prints on mounted masonite
48 x 48 x 2”

For Sale — $2,500.00

The 48 x 48” wall piece was created as a study for the 72 x 72” mural of the same design installed on the California Institute of the Arts’ building exterior in April, 2023.

This piece is a diptych.
See its other half, The Portal, below.

The hourglass. In 300 years, you lie awake. A sharp shard of moonlight hits your face through the window, preventing sleep. You hear mumbled voices by the fire on the pavilion, and the wind sighs and hushes through the spindled ocotillo fronds blooming red in the night. You concede to sleeplessness, wandering out onto the hillside flanking your bedroom window. Laughter and discordant bits of song drift on the night air between craggy rocks and woody creosote. On the grassy hill you lay, moonbathing, watching ambitious sparks from that faraway flame amalgamate with the fervid swathe of stars up above. A familiar figure approaches, dark and quiet, as you lay confounded. Electric. They sit next to you, combing crinkled grass aside. Between you, words pass like crane flies in spring—clumsy, too big, and getting trapped in obvious corners. “Couldn’t sleep”, “beautiful night”, “lonesome, not lonely”, “so you feel it too”, and—a quietly resounding—“I’m glad you’re here”. You lay there together for a while. The stars rotate in the sky unnoticed. Even as the horizon lightens, you’ve finally found sleep tonight—their face in your hands as you’ve both drifted and stilled. Soon, once the sharp light of day hits your eyelids, you’ll awake. Held and whole, blinded in brightness, resisting return and yet lurching forward into the fray. A carnal pantomime amongst the weeds. A stumble and a dance. You begin again.

Stephanie Lane Gage

← Work