Translation: 100 A World Within Connor Hutton Bristles cleave against bone in arrhythmic strokes; wiry, cilia-like hair entrapping, scraping, and freeing 昀氀ecks of debris embedded tightly into the skull of a bull. A clock’s punctual tick aligns with a jarring scratch of the brush or a pitter of grit against the paper the skull rests on. It is a hobby of mine to exhume the remains of the past and to revitalize them in my unique way, to bring them forth into the present, so they may live on long after leaving the mortal world; the paint tray beside it ready to give the gift of color—a new life. Underneath the skull is a notebook; scribbled and scrawled within the pages are cerebral recordings, ideas, concepts, and stories. I am an artist of my mind’s eye, and my creativity knows neither boundaries nor constraints. As I clear my brush of debris and prepare to bestow color to my work, I spare a glance toward my computer. The charging cable is 昀椀rmly in the port; the cord is snaked around the back and looped down into the outlet below. The glance obscures what the gaze reveals: a re昀氀ection buried deep in that black screen. The digital era puzzles me, something so familiar yet inextricably alien. It unites, and it divides. It informs and restricts. It creates and destroys. It scares me, yet I know my purpose as an artist: to create meaning and give awareness, to write messages and inspire, to grow from my mistakes, and to always have hope for a brighter future. Of course, I must care for myself before I can give to the world. A tube of lotion sits delicately on the computer, lightened from multiple uses of its purpose: to care for my skin, my hands, after each expedition into the unknown. It is a ritual of comfort and necessity. The strokes of the brush begin to warp from wide stretches to singular narrows, the sounds intermixing