About the work

The boy who used these pails lived his childhood on a coastline, or at least that’s how he tells it now. He collected the shells and built the castles. He buried his feet in the cool sand before the tide came in. He loved the taste of salt on his lips. One day he must have decided to keep a shell, brought it home from the beach as a memento, and forgot it in his pocket until later. It landed here, on this table, next to the tools he’d discarded. What I wonder is if he remembers which particular day that shell came to rest.