Odd Time
Just a Moment. Back in a Jiffy.
Did you know that a moment and a jiffy are actual units of time?
Naturally, I decided to make hourglasses.
A Moment
Historically, a moment was approximately 90 seconds. Mine contains sand from White Sands, New Mexico, collected from the side of a highway where the dunes are steadily attempting to reclaim the road. No national park regulations were harmed in the making of this artwork.
It also contains fragments of my second marriage. I'll leave those to your imagination.
Every time I turn the hourglass, it's a little exercise in closure and perspective. No matter how terrible things seem, a moment is only 90 seconds.
A Jiffy
In physics, a jiffy can refer to the time light takes to travel one centimeter in a vacuum. That's approximately 33 picoseconds.
How on earth do you illustrate that?
My first attempt contains tiny lab-grown diamonds. They're so small you can't really see them. You can, however, hear them. Which strikes me as a particularly satisfying way to illustrate something that happens too quickly to see.
The exterior features a camouflage pattern I designed to make a centimeter harder to perceive. It's called dazzle camouflage, and it also incorporates an old riddle: What's black and white and red all over?
This is Phase One of an ongoing experiment. The hourglass isn't remotely to scale, and I haven't quite figured out how to represent a single photon traveling one centimeter through a vacuum.
But give me a moment.
Or a jiffy.
Mixed-media conceptual art by C. Collins, 2026.
