CRACKS LET THE LIGHT IN

This past August, Julia C R Gray and I shared Cracks Let the Light In at Sesshin Gallery in Encinitas — an exhibition that became both an offering and an initiation.

At the heart of the show was our collaborative fountain, a piece that began with the theme of cracking — the ways in which fractures, breaks, and fault lines can also be places where light, water, and new life enter. We envisioned the fountain as a metaphor for resilience: the beauty in breaking open, the strength in imperfection, the grace in what flows through us when we allow ourselves to split wide and be seen.

And then, as though the work itself wanted to teach us, we experienced the very thing we were exploring. The fountain literally cracked during the making process. Together, Julia and I found ourselves tending not only to the clay and the water, but to the vulnerable truth of creation — that sometimes the vision shatters, and from the breaking, something even more honest emerges. The process became a living ritual, teaching us that the work was not about avoiding cracks, but about honoring them.

The exhibition expanded beyond the fountain to include a variety of our signature works: Julia’s She torsos, holding the feminine in embodied form, and my Portals, opening into the formless mysteries of energy and spirit. Side by side, they created a landscape of vessel and current, presence and passage, body and spirit.

Guests at Sesshin moved through the space as if through an unfolding ceremony — drawn into the conversation between sculpture and painting, form and opening, fracture and flow. The fountain stood at the center as both an altar and a reminder: that light and water find their way through the very places we imagine are broken.

Cracks Let the Light In was a journey of creation, destruction, and re-creation. A collaboration not only between Julia and me, but between ourselves and the materials, the process, and the mystery of what wanted to come through.

To everyone who came and shared presence with us at Sesshin Gallery, thank you. The cracks, the light, the waters — they continue to ripple outward, reminding us that imperfection is not something to be hidden, but something to be celebrated as the very pathway to beauty.