There undeniably exists a conditio sine qua non: I do not exist apart from my sacred monsters, my relic-objects. I have spoken many times of my spasmodic collecting, which began in childhood with the saving of hair locks. The love that binds me to my small archive of majestic objects from the past is something profoundly infantile; it reaches back to those days when, as a child, I never lifted my gaze from the ground as the street stalls were dismantled because often some forgotten treasure would remain, abandoned, lying in the dust. The instant I join myself to one of these objects, it becomes inevitably a fragment of my poetic self. I believe that in seeking and gathering such treasures I enact, first and foremost, my only means of giving tactile form to immaterial thought, and second, my most profound desire: to consecrate the profane. The love for the chosen object usually arrives instantaneously, like the lightning-struck infatuation of a first schoolyard romance.My soul knows, in some obscure manner, that it will suffer or fail to perceive itself entirely once that bond with the object is severed.As a child, these infatuations occurred haphazardly; later, like love itself, I learned to let myself be courted slowly by objects, and in turn to court them with caution before deciding that we were destined to belong to one another.Objects here transcend every notion of mere use, ownership, or accumulation. They become amulets, icons, simulacra of my own private religion.My city is peopled by these sacred monsters objects infused with soul, which I collect constantly and with care just as, conversely, each sacred monster is a small city to be explored.