Earthworks
WRACK
3.5 x 37 feet, rockweed and abaca paper pulp.
A temporal Earthwork installed in the Cape Cod National Seashore during my Peaked Hill Trust artist residency in the dune shacks. Between high and low tide, I drew lines of seaweed paper pulp in response to wrack lines—the lines of debris in the intertidal zone, an important part of coastal dune ecologies. The sculptural lines were removed before being washed away.
WATERBURY/MATTATUCK
45 x 210 feet, wild urban plants, natural dye plants, meadow plants, water.
A living Earthwork engaging with an urban site in Waterbury, a post-industrial Connecticut city. Meaning “not a tidal river,” Mattatuck is the Algonquin place name. Instead of removing the existing wild urban plants, I mixed in natural dye plants and meadow species with them. This created a surprisingly lush, resilient plant community. This post-wild installation connects people and the Earth—accumulating life, providing dye color, and evoking deep memory of Waterbury’s pre-Columbian meadow landscapes.
My work re-contextualizes nature into contemporary art and cities, creating conditions for beauty, belonging, and novel ecologies. Thank you to the New England Foundation for the Arts Public Art Learning Grant and good friends for supporting my vision for holistic outdoor public art that uses living plants as sculptural material.
One circle Again
One Circle Again is series of temporary, site specific Earthworks in public locations.
They are ecosocial sketches, initiated as a response to the persistent bias against women, non-binary people, and minorities in permanent public art sculpture commissions. Each became an interaction between myself and symptoms of our changing climate, such as extreme weather events and sea level rise. They question sustainability in public art processes through using only site materials and constructed in harmony with local ecologies.
Climate change is a symptom of a problem—lack of diversity, lack of respect for the natural world, and a fractured view of how we relate to living systems. Humans are not separate from our waters, soils, plants, and species. We are one and the same. Achieving unity will heal social and environmental fractures.
Quonset (One Circle Again)
ocean brick, 3.5 x 3.5 x 2 ft., January 2021.
There’s a humble beach surrounded by industry and the bay. Once Narragansett tribe territory, the Quonset Point area has a layered history intersecting culture and nature. I visited at low tide, and stacked the rounded ocean bricks at the water’s edge in a broken circular wall structure.
Push Harder (One Circle Again)
snow and detritus, 33 x 61 x 4.5 ft., December 2020.
After a heavy snowfall, I created five snow sculptures in a public park. Each work measures my physical strength and ability to push harder. These quickly melted after a sharp fluctuation into warm temperatures.
Storm Water Interruption (One Circle Again)
snow, leaf litter, storm water, 5 ft. 10 in. diameter, edition of 2
Heavy rainfall created flooding, because of previous snowfall and compacted soil conditions on the path. A group of two circular clearings, their diameter equates to my above-average height. The installations were placed on a walking path, so as not to be ignored.
Blackstone Watershed Papers
cyanotype on artist-made paper from water chestnut, Japanese knotweed, eurasian milfoil, abaca, 6 at 36 x 36 in, 2018
Installed in downtown Pawtucket, Rhode Island, USA.
A multi-sited, temporary wheat-paste installation of 6 paperworks on building surfaces in downtown Pawtucket, Rhode Island, exploring place through the medium of papermaking and cyanotype—both historical industrial technologies and contemporary handcrafts. The artist-made papers are made of locally found pondweed and plants that impact the Blackstone River Watershed, and each contact print uses the actual plants as silhouettes.
Cyanotype is a historical photographic process that was most famously used in 1853 by Anna Atkins to study and record plants. Parallel to this technological development, Pawtucket was becoming the birthplace of the American industrial revolution. This project reflects upon connections between these histories, local plant ecologies in the past and present, and the important role of the Blackstone River in the shaping of the local landscape. Viewers used a Google Map of the installation sites, walking around downtown to view the works as part of the public art program for the Pawtucket Arts Festival.
Paper Pours
Bagasse Pour, Paper Cast and Charcoal, 15 x 4 ft., 2011
Plaquemine Pour, Paper Cast, 15 x 22 x 6 ft., 2011
Remnants exhibited at Glassell Gallery, Baton Rouge LA
Poured paper pulp casts of the Mississippi River levee near the lock in Plaquemine, Louisiana. Created with locally sourced bagasse (sugar cane) and linen rag fibers. The paper casts re-engage the altered landscape and waterway.
After pouring and drying over several days, a desiccated version of the pour is peeled back from the concrete slope. The resulting casts are installed to echo the levee's slope, and the bottom edges of paper drape on the floor, giving one a sense of a space below and above. When light travels through this sheet, all of the ripples, holes and tears of its varied density become alive, glowing with life. Near the bottom, ripped from the levee, are grasses, dirt, stones and tar that the paper cast removed from the site.