The Stories We Layer: Creating "The Butterfly Effect"

There's something about old letters that stops me every time - the handwriting, the postal marks, the evidence that someone once held this paper and sent their words into the world, hoping they'd reach someone far away.

"The Butterfly Effect" started with a collection of French correspondence from the 1930s through the 1960s. Envelopes addressed to California, postcards stamped in Vallejo, airmail stickers promising swift delivery across the Atlantic. Each piece carries fragments of conversations I'll never fully know - "le soleil," "chocolat à noodle," addresses carefully written in fountain pen.

I started layering them, letting the postal marks and stamps create their own rhythm. Then came the figure - sitting at the edge, in that suspended moment we all recognize. Watching something beautiful drift away. Holding on and letting go at the same time.

The golden butterfly became the center. Not just decoration, but the point where everything shifts. That's what the butterfly effect is, really - the idea that something as delicate as a wing's movement can cascade into something much larger. A letter sent. A choice made. A moment of release.

The French script, the canceled stamps, the postal marks - they're all evidence of small actions that rippled across distance and time. And now, decades later, they form the foundation for a new story about transformation and consequence.

Sometimes you don't know which moment will be the one that changes everything. You just have to let the butterflies fly.

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