america on Fire

A Reflection on the Beauty and Brutality of Our Times

In my latest project, America on Fire, I wanted to confront a reality we often choose to scroll past. The inspiration came from a place of urgency, a response to the chaos that surrounds us daily but has become background noise in a society trained to dissociate.

We live in a time where tragedy is constant, but compassion is fleeting. Headlines blur, suffering becomes content, and in the place of empathy, we are offered distraction.

America on Fire is both a critique and a mirror, an attempt to strip away the comfortable distance we've built between ourselves and the pain that exists, sometimes just beyond our front door.

At the heart of the piece is a stained glass design, a traditional symbol of sanctity and reflection, reimagined as flickering flames. This fire, crafted in glass, is both beautiful and brutal. It speaks to the way devastation is often camouflaged by pious ideals, filtered through belief systems that claim to protect but too often serve to pacify. The burning world is wrapped in reverence, hiding the smoke in stained-glass sanctity.

I projected this image over the model in red, white, and blue, the colors of a nation in turmoil. These hues, normally associated with patriotism and pride, here become symbols of discomfort, of unrest. The light spills over the model like a warning, like a prayer, like a scream.

America on Fire asks us to feel. To stop. To see. To sit with the discomfort. To break through the numbness. To question what we worship, what we ignore, and why.

This project is not just about fire, it’s about the systems that ignite it and the silence that lets it burn.