Each composition begins as a medium format digital photograph, composed practically in-camera, then contact-printed by hand using an analog process. The birds, living, breathing individuals, were photographed in collaboration with HawkWatch International, a conservation organization that monitors raptor populations across the world as indicators of ecosystem health. The resulting compositions are assembled from tiled cyanotype prints on cotton paper, creating large-scale, physical works whose imperfections—brush strokes, tonal shifts, slight paper warps—underscore the labor of their making and the tactility of their imagining.

The project draws inspiration from a stanza in Tomas Tranströmer’s poem, The Blue House, which speaks to the alternate lives and futures that remain just out of reach. In that spirit, All Sketches Wish to Be Real proposes that imagination is not escapism, but agency, that scenarios dreamed into being can exert their own gravitational pull. To envision a more generous future is to begin to call it into form. These works are not fantasies, but invitations, sketches with a pulse, asking to be made real.