Since I was a young child, I have been transfixed by the question of how we should live. Convinced that the dying would have the answer, I contacted hospices across the Bay Area in California and asked to be put in touch with their patients. I spent the next two years going to meet these people and interview them about their lives - their reflections, regrets and lessons.
The culmination of my meetings is a series of nine life-size graphite pencil portraits. Using the text from more than fifty hours of interviews, I transcribed my subjects' words onto their clothing in the drawings and created a three-minute audio edit of each person’s interview to accompany their portrait.
In making this work I came to observe a profound paradox: in talking with me about dying, these people taught me how to live more meaningfully and more intensely. I found that, for most people, what mattered was how they had participated in the world and what they had created – whether that was through connection with their children, community, work or nature. Though I spoke with people from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds, nobody wished they had made more money, worked harder or bought more things. In short, they were not concerned with what they consumed and took into themselves. If I learned any one lesson from my conversations, it is that meaning does not come from consumption, but creation. The meaningful life is one that gives more than it takes.