Alkes takes its name from the Arabic al-Ka's, meaning 'the cup,' the same root from which the constellation name Crater derives. In Greek mythology, the Cup was associated with Apollo and a tale of deception: the god sent a crow to fetch water in the cup, but the crow delayed to eat figs and then brought a water serpent as a false excuse for his delay. Apollo saw through the lie and placed all three in the sky, with the crow permanently separated from the water  by the serpent, as a warning. Alkes represents the vessel itself, the container of truth that reveals dishonesty.

It's an amusing story on the surface, crows are funny birds, more knowing than they let on. But I see something else beneath the fable of dishonesty, I hear a story about longing and how desire can be a kind of ruin willingly walked into and transforming everything. There is something comforting about that, something vast and inescapable. Like bright ink of the serpent skin, spilling over everything at once. 

I perceive the vessel of Crater as a container of this unavoidable pulse of longing that threads through life. I chose to keep the star Alkes in this particular mythological context, not to explain anything, but to observe the distance between things this story touches upon; A reaching toward something perpetually out of grasp, a lingering in the in-between and unresolved beauty of desire itself.