The Shape of What’s Left Behind is a series of seven bronze sculptures that I cast from 2022-2024. 

This work invites us to learn from nature’s wisdom—its choreographies of growth, decay, death, and renewal—to be re-enchanted, and reflect on how we share space. Each piece tells a story of transformation that shapes all living beings: fig pollinated by wasps, an opium seed head, a bell resonating with memory, and a seawitch goblet formed from burning oyster shells. Together, they honor nature’s resilience, femininity, and interbeingness. The lost wax casting process imprints ephemeral moments of growth, decay, fluctuation, and renewal in enduring bronze, a material that itself transforms over time—corroding, evolving, and returning to the earth.

Continuing the age-old use of bronze for memorials, this series asks: What is worth preserving? What can we learn from nature’s dynamic transformations? How do they nurture and care?

Guests are invited to pour over the sea witch, to handle the eggs, figs, and poppy in the gallery, and to ring the bell. 

From the visible unseen (in A Toast in the House of Friends)

the human condition 

is a condition 

of what the earth knows.

Akilah Oliver