Sydney Cain (b. 1991, San Francisco, CA) (she/them), aka sage stargate, is a visual artist based in San Francisco. Their work reflects encounters with unseen realities. Cain privileges works on paper and engages graphite, powdered metals, lithography, dye, and chalk as transcendent emblems of impermanence and transformation. These specific materials, as well as other mixed media and moving images act as ciphers to assist her in decoding the seen and unseen worlds. Their use of graphite is especially integral to their practice: the element carbon stimulates the allotropic and transformative potential of the medium. Chalk, another preferred carbon-based material, commonly formed from the shells of ancient deep marine organisms, acts as a medium imbued with the essence of spiral time theories.