Paris

I've loved different forms of art for as long as I can remember. Like most kids, I started with drawing, then just kept expanding what counted: painting, crochet, photography, film, eventually code. Sketching is the one that goes back the furthest.

I drew this sketch of Notre-Dame sitting directly in front of the cathedral in Paris. It took about eight hours, and the hardest part, also the best part, was that nothing stayed still. The light shifted through the day, shadows moved across the façade, the building kept changing in front of me while I was trying to draw it as one fixed thing. Sketching forces a kind of attention that photography doesn't: the small textures in the stone, the edges of the arches, the details I'd normally walk past. This drawing holds onto not just what Notre-Dame looks like, but the hours I spent actually looking at it.