I made this piece while sitting in on an apocalypse-themed history class taught by my friend and artist/historian Patrice Olsen and retired Yale Library curator of Early Books and Manuscripts Ray Clemens. In that particular class, Ray lectured on the post-apocalyptic novel A Canticle for Leibowitz, a book that I recall as having taken my breath away when I read it 15 years ago.

A medieval manuscripts scholar, Ray had shared that, in medieval times, you can only be tortured twice, except if you are Jewish, or if you have lied.

The character 人, which means human/person in Chinese, drowning/floating in the relentless waves, makes a resurgence in this piece. This motif first appeared in Genesis 5-10: Noah (2025), which is also part of my submission.