Memory Meteoroids

Student Scrap Steel, Local Weeds, UV Prints
2024-2025
Under the blank glow of fluorescent lights in the University of Texas, Austin metal shop, I sift through odd scraps—squares, triangles, and jagged, unnameable shapes. These are remnants of student projects, cut from sixteen-gauge plate steel. To some, they’re just castoffs and misfires. To me, they’re charged with possibility.

I gather them like shards of memory, bits of knowledge and experience, and weld them into volumetric forms that resemble asteroids—awkward, faceted, aesthetically ambiguous. They emerge from the same institutional machinery I move through, reassembled from its leftovers.

They are in flux—pieces of a larger mosaic still taking shape, chunks of material destined to someday disperse their molecules into the cosmos. I suspend them like planets orbiting a sun in the gallery, and give them life by potting resilient stubborn weeds (harvested from my girlfriend’s lawn) into their steel bodies.

Joanne_2025AA_ausTX
24 x 18 x 30 in.
Student Scrap Steel, Local Weeds, Transducer, UV Prints
2024-2025
Maja_2025DA_ausTX
20 x 28 x 30 in.
Student Scrap Steel, Local Weeds, Transducer UV Prints
2025
Kate_2025BA_ausTX
12 x 18 x 18 in. 
Student Scrap Steel, UV Prints 
2025

Ben_2025CA_ausTX
20 x 20 x 25 in. 
Student Scrap Steel, Local Weeds, Speaker, UV Prints 
2025

Jenesis_2024YA_ausTX
20 x 20 x 25 in. 
Student Scrap Steel, Local Weeds, Speaker, UV Prints 
2025
Lydia_2025DA_ausTX
12 x 15 x 15 in. 
Student Scrap Steel, UV Print
2025
Tucker_2025KA_ausTX
18 x 24 x 8 in. 
Student Scrap Steel, UV Print
2025

Nathan_2025FA_ausTX
12 x 24 x 8 in. 
Student Scrap Steel, UV Print
2025

Seth_2025FB_ausTX
18 x 24 x 8 in. 
Student Scrap Steel, UV Print
2025

Angelina_2025KB_ausTX
18 x 30 x 4 in. 
Student Scrap Steel, 3D Print, UV Print
2025

Hugo_2025KC_ausTX
10 x 12 x 1 in. 
Student Scrap Steel, 3D Print, UV Print
2025
As per NASA rules for naming asteroids, the designations of the Memory Meteoroids begin with the name of the meteoroid, the year of its creation, followed by two letters that give the order of its assembly during that year. Objects, made between 1 and 15 January, are designated in order of their creation, AA, AB, AC, and so on. Those made between 16 and 31 January are given the letters BA, BB, BC, and so on. The final creations of the year, between 16 and 31 December, have designations in the series YA, YB, YC. (The letter J is not used.) For example, 1992 KD would have been the fourth meteoroid made during the second half of May 1992.  Finally the first three letters of the city of assembly are in lower case, followed by the state in upper case.(name)_(year of discovery)(month/day)_(city(lowercase))(state/country)
ex: Nathan_2025FA_ausTX