Rooted in the ancient Germanic and Old Norse word for "secret" or "whisper," runes originated as more than just a writing system; in early societies where literacy was rare, carving these symbols onto wood, stone, or bone felt like capturing hidden knowledge. While historical scripts like the Elder Futhark served as practical communication across Northern Europe before the rise of the Latin alphabet, runic symbols have evolved into modern tools for meditation, craft, and personal reflection. By casting runestones or embedding these ancient shapes into art, we tap into a long-standing human tradition of treating symbols as vessels for deep, timeless meaning.

The Deseret alphabet is one of the most fascinating artifacts of 19th-century Utah history—a utopian, pragmatic experiment in design, phonetic efficiency, and community-building. In this series, those historic geometric shapes are consciously adapted to function as modern runestones.

At its core, this work bridges three layers of personal lineage: the local pioneer roots of the Deseret alphabet, an echo of ancestral Germanic and Scandinavian runic traditions, and a contemporary worldview shaped by a constellation of universal ideas drawn from Greek philosophy, classical ethics, humanism, neo paganism, taoism and many others.

Rather than adopting external traditions, this is an internal dialogue with my own heritage. By carving or painting these characters into high-desert wood or stone these symbols become tools for personal reflection—a way to explore how our histories intersect with timeless, universal questions about human consciousness and meaning.