Lessons on Transmutation, 2020

Shown in Works in Progress in the Groot Gallery, Northfield, Minnesota with the Fifth Year Emerging Artists.

In this period of extreme transition, I’ve found myself paying closer attention to the objects and life around me - finding beauty in a wayward stone, in ashes, in weeds - and harnessing and transforming that beauty into a capsule of place and time. While exploring new places, I am aware of the Earth and what it is offering me and how we can engage in transmutation together, while I also walk the lines between stealing from the land and collaborating with it. I’ve connected with my local environments, used food waste, metaphysical herbs, and flora from personally significant space and times  in my paint making. All of this gives me a greater appreciation for the possibilities of creating without the lens of capitalism obscuring my practice, and the ways a tool’s form or invention can outstrip the need for function.

gum arabic, natural pigments, handmade paper