I grew up in Alabama surrounded by religion. Sunday sermons could be powerful things. Heaven was promised as the reward for living right, while Hell was described in enough detail to make certain that even a child understood what was waiting for those who did not. Those images stayed with me. Years later, I began wondering about the space between the two. Purgatory interested me because it suggested that death might not settle everything quite as neatly as I had been taught. People could arrive still carrying their memories, habits, desires, mistakes, hopes, and all the other things that made them human. That opened another question for me. What happened after they passed through Purgatory? I began imagining a spiritual existence that was not all that different from the life people had known before. They gathered. They celebrated. They argued. They danced. They waited around. Some seemed confused about where they were going. Others appeared perfectly comfortable making themselves at home. In other words, becoming a spirit did not necessarily mean that you stopped being yourself. That idea allowed the work to move beyond the fear of Heaven and Hell that I remembered from childhood. The gates, clouds, spirits, and strange gatherings became a place where I could think about judgment and redemption, but also about the persistence of human nature. There is seriousness in these works, but there is humor too. I have never been completely convinced that people suddenly become solemn simply because they have crossed over to the other side. Perhaps we take more of ourselves with us than we imagine.