The Guardian, 2004

White Italian Marble; 28" x 29" x 106" (71 x 74 x 270 cm)

In a private Collection, Canada.

Guardian was carved from a single block of white Italian marble, its winged, ascending form drawn from the shape of a small fossil — a petrified shark's tooth found on a North American beach. Held up to the light, these fossils reveal an unexpected figuration: a silhouette that reads, at a glance, as a body with arms raised, as if caught mid-flight or mid-gesture of delight. Guardian takes that fleeting resemblance and gives it scale and permanence, translating something the length of a fingernail into a standing, watchful presence just under nine feet tall.

The title reflects how the piece has been received as much as how it was made. Guardian stands with the quiet authority of a sentinel — protective without aggression, upright without rigidity — and viewers have often described it in the language of watching over: a figure keeping faith at a threshold. That resonance was not fully intended at the outset, but it has shaped how I think about the form since: as a marker of deep time standing guard at the edge of the present.

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