Dissolve Coagulate

Abstract

In both human bodies and ecology, healing is a layered experience known by its transformative outcomes. My work translates the slow, invisible process of healing into textural, visual meditations. I make the invisible seen and felt through working with the elementals: dripping water, erosions of earth, material formed by fire, and the ephemerality of air. These elements function as tools, substances, and subjects of the work. Their intelligences are my collaborators. To articulate these phenomena, I use combinations of materials: carved blocks of salt, blown glass, sheet glass, photographs printed on canvas and silk, handmade cotton paper, and neon. In addition to the visceral language of the elementals, my practice incorporates the ancient language of alchemy and the philosophical language of phenomenology as applied to current medical approaches to illness. Informed by post-humanist perspectives on nature’s autonomy and traditions of earth-based spirituality, I draw parallels between the health of our earth as affected by climate change with the health of human bodies. Symbols of contemporary human medicine, such as infusions, intersect with the organic surfaces of nature in sculptures and photographs. The infusions are often represented as organic lines of neon, interrupting the romance of the pastoral. The luminosity of neon, and the photographic flash, become mystic illuminations towards envisioning a new future.