“A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.” — Leopold Stokowski

In life, as in music and art, what we leave unsaid often carries as much weight as what we express. A pause in conversation, a silence between notes, or an open expanse on a canvas can speak with more clarity than words or sound or paint alone. Absence creates tension and invites participation—it asks the mind to fill in what is missing, to complete the shape of an idea.

This principle is at the heart of Round About 2, a sculpture that pares the clock down to a single numeral. The “2” is enough for recognition, a small but deliberate clue. We know where the rest of the hours belong, not because they are visible, but because our conceptual framework tells us where they belong.

The title of this sculpture, Round About 2, is a nod to Thelonious Monk’s ballad ’Round Midnight—a piece that captures particularly well a quality shared by much of jazz itself. Jazz, perhaps more than any other musical genre, depends on what is withheld: the pause before a phrase, the rest between beats, the silence that defines the shape of sound. Whether in art or music, such space invites the audience to enter—to integrate the composition and interpret its expression. Monk’s music makes this principle vivid, using space as a structural element. In the same way, Round About 2 invites us to see the whole within the void—to recognize that what is missing is not lost but simply waiting to be found.