........death - The undiscover’d country, from whose bourne
No traveler returns............ Shakespeare (Hamlet)

LATE is a group of small carved wood sculptures of caskets. Highly painted and decorated, some are closed, some open to reveal more symbolic imagery. Each of the 30 caskets commemorates a favorite illustrious person from the past – artists, inventors, renegades………

LATE is the first series in THE FINAL FRONTIER - the overall title of a collection of series investigating, in a visually acute and sometimes humorous manner, mortality.

Throughout history death has inspired different beliefs in different cultures:
AN END. A RELEASE. A PROCESS. A JOURNEY. A TRANSFORMATION.

Nevertheless, people today, especially in Western nations, are out of touch with the process of death and dying. Indeed, death in the 20th and 21st centuries is treated much as sex was in the 19th century - avoided in speech or spoken of in euphemisms, hidden, codified, and protected with rituals and taboos.