Incubator (for Saskia Hamilton), 2025
12″x12″x4″ – Wood, metal, paint with fiber-optic lights.
It’s no secret that I attended Georgetown Day School in Washington, D.C. and that Saskia was one of my classmates. This past May, the GDHS Class of 1985 celebrated its 40th Anniversary on a unified campus that didn’t exist back in 1985.
We graduated from Georgetown Day School in the ’80s, so there was a fierce competition to get into the Ivies. Sadly, my grade-school friend didn’t make the cut. She ended up attending my father’s alma mater, Kenyon.
As a Poet, she made it work, nonetheless. During her Senior year she won a prize that financed her Master’s degree at NYU, laying the ground for her Ph.D. at Boston University.
Saskia may not have gotten into any of the Ivies but by the time of her death in 2023, she had been a Radcliffe Fellow and her final position, Vice Provost at Barnard College, part of Columbia University.
An incubator like GDS can also be a cage but Saskia made it work.