For Vince.
Vincent Evan Pane left us far too soon, at the age of 31. He passed doing one of the many things he loved, deep in the wilderness, high on the Colorado mountain tops.
Vince's life was extraordinary, and it inspired everyone who got to be around him. He met each day with an unwavering passion. For chemistry, for sculpture, for climbing, for a fresh mango eaten on top of something tall. His boundless curiosity and creative spirit took him to places on this earth that few people will ever see.
The people around him are still here. They are who this is for.
- Born
- August 25, 1993
- Passed
- August 28, 2024
- Lived
- 31 years, fully
A life lived in many forms.
Vince was a chemist and a climber, a sculptor and a dancer, a fashion designer and a fruit enthusiast. The people who love him each know a different version. Together, they hold the whole picture.
Stanford PhD chemist
Polyhydroxyalkanoate synthesis in the Waymouth lab. Co-taught a class called Partner with Trees on the macrostructure of woody plants.
American Ninja Warrior
Multiple seasons. He trained the way he lived, with full commitment and a smile.
Wood sculptor
Carved trees into hands reaching for the sky, holding onto old signs. Fearless work, exploring life's edges.
Hand-sewn fashion
His mother taught him to sew. He made his own clothes. Custom pieces. Things you would never find on a rack.
Dancer and acrobat
Performed with Chocolate Heads. Moved between artsy and outdoor like the same language.
Wilderness adventurer
Tree climber, mountaineer, rollerskater, mango enthusiast. Slept on the ground next to friends' hammocks because he wanted to be close to them.
Vince's art.
After his PhD, Vince retired from lab-based chemistry to focus full-time on sculpture. He worked from a van that doubled as a mobile machine shop, carving reclaimed wood he collected and dried himself.
An engineer without approach, a scientist without method, and an artist with nothing to sell.
Featured piece
Pabulum
The keystone piece of Prison Renaissance, a collaboration between incarcerated individuals and Stanford students. A child kneels in a river, drinking from words exchanged between seemingly disparate groups as they explored their shared humanity through art.
56 naturally-colored pieces of reclaimed wood. The river inlay alone is built from 36 of them.
Pabulum is rendered as an interactive 3D model on Vince's portfolio site.
Explore in 3D at vincentpane.comMoments.
A few photos his community shared on his tribute page.
Why this exists
After Vince passed, his family set up an online tribute page. People came from every chapter of his life. From high school, from Stanford, from American Ninja Warrior, from climbing and dancing and art.
But a tribute page can only do so much. People posted, and people read, and then the page fell silent. Not because the love had faded, but because the platform wasn't built to keep everyone coming back.
There was no way for the people in his life to reply to a tribute. No way to react, or thank, or add to it. No way to be alerted when a new memory was shared. No way to find the people whose names they didn't recognize. No way to keep his friendships, and his memory, alive.
We built inVINCEable so he could stay a part of our lives.
Our mission
When someone is taken from our world before their time, the network they leave behind has no home. Friends, family, mentors, teammates, neighbors. Those people still need each other. They might need each other for the next 50 or 60 years.
inVINCEable's mission is to give that network a permanent, private home. Not a memorial page. Not a Facebook group that disappears into the algorithm. Not a comment thread that fills with bots. A real community, kept alive on purpose, by the people who loved them.
Want to start a network for someone you've lost?
We onboard networks personally, one family at a time.
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