Although I made or was inspired to make the illuminated sculptures in the Museum of Desert Lights for purely aesthetic reasons - simply as nice things to look at - I have nevertheless always thought of them as a metaphor for our lives and our deaths. In fact I first called them soul lanterns. Because as with the pieces of metal, we are made and then end up performing some function in life, becoming a little battered and bruised along the way; then we wear out, our usefulness at an end, and we die, then often buried in the earth; but it could be that even though our bodies are gone our shining God-given souls survive in eternity. So looking at them with this in mind, the glowing colored light emanating from pieces of metal can be thought of as the souls of the good and energetic people who used them here in the Owens Valley; and in a larger sense they represent the bodies and souls of all of us.