A few thoughts on how and why Ephemera Sanctuary came to me as a container for this experience.

I’ve always been drawn to the things people leave behind.

Photographs tucked into albums. Letters folded into envelopes. Newspaper clippings. Programs from graduations and funerals. Handwritten recipes. Postcards. Ticket stubs. Documents bearing names, dates, addresses, and other small traces of a life. Objects that may seem ordinary on their own, but become something altogether different when we understand who held onto them, why they mattered, and the stories they carry.

There is a word for many of these things: ephemera.

Traditionally, ephemera refers to materials created for a particular moment or purpose that were never necessarily intended to last. A program announces an event. A ticket grants admission. A letter communicates something from one person to another. A newspaper records the concerns of a particular day. Their original usefulness can be fleeting.

And yet, they survive.

Sometimes deliberately. Sometimes accidentally. Sometimes because someone, somewhere, decided that this particular piece of paper was worth keeping.

That contradiction is part of what draws me to ephemera. Something can be temporary in its intended purpose and still become permanent in its meaning. Once separated from its original moment, an ordinary object can become evidence: evidence that someone was here, that something happened, that a relationship existed, that a journey was taken, that a family changed, that a life was lived.

But preservation alone isn’t enough. The things we inherit—or discover—need somewhere to belong.

That is where sanctuary enters the name.

A sanctuary is a place of refuge and protection. It is somewhere we safeguard what is vulnerable, but it can also be a place where we give something the space and attention it deserves. I began thinking about what it might mean to create that kind of refuge for memory: not simply storing the remnants of the past, but examining them, interpreting them, arranging them, and allowing them to tell stories.

Ephemera Sanctuary became the name for that idea.

It is a creative container for the different ways I think about history, memory, material culture, family, storytelling, and the objects that connect them. It gives me room to explore how seemingly small things can open much larger doors. A photograph can lead to a family story. A census record can lead to a question about migration. A recipe can reveal inheritance and adaptation. A scrapbook can become a narrative. An object can become an archive.

The sanctuary, then, is not only for the physical object. It is for the stories contained within and around it.

This is also why Ephemera Sanctuary feels expansive enough to hold the different ideas I want to pursue. Some may take the form of workshops. Others may become writing, visual storytelling, research, exhibitions, books, or projects I haven’t imagined yet. What connects them is not necessarily their format. It is a shared belief that the fragments we accumulate throughout our lives—and the fragments left to us by others—can become starting points for deeper acts of remembrance and storytelling.

There is something beautiful to me about giving permanence to things defined by their impermanence.

Maybe that is the simplest way to explain Ephemera Sanctuary.

Ephemera is what remains. Sanctuary is what we create around it.