Steel and the Stars: Why Sustainability Begins in the Cosmos

Steel isn’t just a sustainable material—it’s a relic of the stars. Explore how the story of steel, from supernova to sculpture, reveals a deeper cycle of cosmic creation, waste resistance, and artistic transformation.

Steel and the Stars: Why Sustainability Begins in the Cosmos

Not every material tells a story that spans billions of years.

Steel does.

When people talk about sustainability, they often focus on the visible: plastic waste, mass production, the overuse of disposable goods. And rightly so. We’re overwhelmed with materials that are made to break, to be replaced, to disappear into landfills. Steel resists that. It stays. It holds. It endures.

But for me, the sustainability of steel goes far beyond durability or recycling metrics. It’s cosmic.

Steel is made mostly of iron. And where does iron come from? Not from a factory. Not even from Earth, if you zoom out far enough. The iron in our steel was forged in the heart of ancient stars. It’s one of the last elements a star creates before it collapses. After that, it explodes—becoming a supernova, scattering metals across space. That’s the dust we’re walking on. That’s the metal we melt down and shape and give new forms. That’s the matter I work with.

In that sense, steel isn’t just sustainable—it’s ancestral. Galactic.

My sculptures, which I call galactic fossils, are a response to that lineage. Each one is an artifact made from the bones of stars. They’re not just objects for shelves or pedestals. They’re fragments of a cycle that began long before humanity existed and will continue long after we’re gone. They are born from stellar death and shaped by human hands.

This is the full circle I keep returning to: a star dies, it sends its elements into the universe, those elements land on Earth, and billions of years later, an artist welds and shapes them into a form that reflects the cosmos itself. A fossil, yes—but one that remembers not just time, but space.

Steel isn’t “just” strong or “just” recyclable. It’s part of a loop that defies the disposable mindset. We can melt it, reshape it, repurpose it—and in doing so, we’re continuing the work of the universe: transforming chaos into form, explosion into creation.

Wood has soul. Stone has memory. But steel?

Steel has gravity.

It pulls everything together—origin and outcome, collapse and creation. It’s not a passive material. It’s a witness to the largest processes we know: planetary formation, meteor impacts, civilization itself. And now, art.

Sustainability, then, isn’t only about reusing what we have. It’s about recognizing what we’ve already been given. Not as consumers. As caretakers of stardust.

So no, I’m not working with metal. I’m working with what the universe left behind.

Steel just happens to be the name we gave it.