I won’t forget the first time I saw Ray Howlett’s art. It was over a year into the pandemic, and my 11-year-old daughter, Tess, had become a nautilus. Like the cephalopod mollusk in its hypnotizing spiral shell, she had withdrawn to a deep, dark crevice. I had not seen her sly smile in months. I couldn’t even recall the echo of her laugh. Watching her slowly disappear was like looking at a solar eclipse. My eyes burned. My heart skidded.
I didn’t admire Howlett’s piece in a
