Letters on the Wayside

Abstract

My nose inches from the ground, the texture of chalk in my mouth. Movement that has been frozen in time, like a rabbit’s reaction to a snapping branch. Water that is no longer wet to your touch, while the muck from the morning’s walk still clings to my boots. Primal knowledge, to need, to see, to feel these things before we go. Visceral experiences like these come to life in my assemblages where highly detailed images of nature and debris become fragmented landscapes. When making these assemblages, I am mining my materials for unseen connections to create an experience with nature that is often unobserved. Experience becomes space in this highly exacting process. A collage is a layering of experiences, most of which are felt and not seen in their absence. Images that hold tense conversations, textures that rub shoulders, the weaving composition that holds these complexities while also guiding direction. It is a complicated and layered understanding that is reminiscent of lived experience and wormholes in memory to recall where we have been and the things we have seen. Through a dialogue in the epistolary form I become aware of all the subtleties around me, which open a new world into ways of looking. This text is presented as ancillary to my creative output; it parallels my discoveries and my art making process.