“‘Over time my father who was a physicist and an engineer, could no longer find his way home. Despite his forgetfulness (Alzheimer’s) he always delighted in the idea of sublimation. ‘Do you know what sublimation is?’ he would ask. ‘Tell me again,’ I would answer. ‘Sublimation is when ice is transformed directly into a gas without melting. It seems to skip this intermediate step and just disappears.’

“Sublimation combines two bodies of work. The first, Simple Gifts, is a woodcut installation that began as a response to migration crises and broadened into a story of people in desperate circumstances seeking a better life by helping each other and themselves. Its three sections are modeled on Dante’s Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso, a descent into brutality, an escape story and a resting place. The resting place is also a vision of heaven, that is, the hope of reuniting with family and friends.”    —Libby Hague, SNAP Gallery, “My Story of Sublimation”, akimbo, April 8, 2023