Based on an out of body experience I had in 2007. I’d been at Deep Creek Hot Springs all day with my boyfriend at the time and we were back at his place to sleep. In the middle of the night I woke up and I was hovering in the middle of the room and slowly rising. Encircling me was this ring made up of something that looked white and glossy; like marshmallow cream or ectoplasm from the spiritualist photographs. I rose until I touched the ceiling and then pushed through. The white circle cut through the ceiling to reveal all of the layers and materials that made up the roof; sheetrock, wood, tar. I kept rising until I passed through the roof and could see all of the ventilation pipes coming out of the roof with downtown Los Angeles in the distance. I kept rising above the building and I started to get nervous that I would float away, and then I got snapped back into my body in the bed. I woke up and couldn’t move my body. Sleep paralysis. I laid there for almost 20 minutes and when I finally went back to sleep it happened again. I only went half way to the ceiling that time before getting snapped back into my body.

I tried several techniques to try and recreate that as a photograph and this one worked great. I had taken a photo of Rya and projected it onto a black paper backdrop, traced it, and then cut the shape out. On the other side of the cutout is a lot of Christmas lights so that the figure would be made up of a million points of light. Long exposure, star filter, rainbow filter.