Honestly, I just like stars. In a more pragmatic way, I think they’re a really common shape. But also it’s really simple; it’s a perfect middle ground between something like a circle, which is like anything, and then, like, a horse, which is too complicated. But a star is, like, right in the middle.

So when I started collecting photos of them, I set down some ground rules for myself. One of them is that the star had to be naturally occurring—it couldn’t be a star that I drew or someone else drew in front of me, because that’s too easy. I’m also not interested in stars that are too mass-produced, stars that are used everywhere; there’s no art to them.

What I’m really interested in is this element of surprise or serendipity. I think what comes with that is sometimes a star just feels like a star, instead of being a perfect one. And so I think one of my favorite ones is when I was eating some ramen noodles, and I dropped them, and a noodle landed in the shape of a star. I was like, “Oh my God.”

My friend said something really profound to me when I was telling him about my collection—he said that the star is really interesting because it’s sort of like the shape of a body. I think there’s definitely, like, sort of an evolutionary explanation for why I do this, or why I can do this. Because survival is all about pattern recognition and seeing predators, and maybe there’s something about the sort of vaguely figural shape of the star. It’s like humans searching for humans.

Wait—I’m finding friends, wherever I go!