WHAT IS MY PRACTICE

 My practice emerges from my experiences. Something will capture my attention, and then I will intuitively pursue it. Often, it is something I don't know about, but want to know.

Or I will think I know something, but then something else will come up to challenge what I know. And then I have to figure out why.

My background is in writing. First, though, a reader - a devourer of words, a participant in otherworlds. Then a writer. Writing was more than enough - to play with, to pursue, to convey. Until it stopped working. At some point, after my life became full of words, I had a moment where all the words in my mind were unable to reach my lips; where I had the eerie feeling that despite making words and clarity of language my profession, when I tried to communicate by speech or words, it was as if I was speaking a foreign language.

In 8/2021, just as covid was starting to decline, I was diagnosed separately with Stage III breast cancer and with ADHD. Simultaneously, my eldest daughter was also diagnosed with ADHD, I broke up with a long-term partner, and a dear friend died unexpectedly. After covid and all the challenging circumstances surrounding it, this proved too much to bear. Writing became a futile exercise. It made me feel anxious, adding to my exhaustion. I found myself at a point where I wrote: Perhaps it is time to face the reality that I am not a writer.  

So I stopped "writing." Or trying to write. I still wrote things down in journals. But I shut out any projects or "goals" that I had been working on.

DEVELOPING PRACTICE

I have been working with clay since 2017. My entry was the wheel, as it is with many people. Similarly, at first, I disdained hand-building, dismissing it as rudimentary and for people who were without skills. As I got further into clay, however, I realized that hand-building was absolutely my thing. I am interested in the material of clay as much as the materiality of it. I became obsessed with discovering the natures of clay, where it came from, its histories and attributes and foibles.

Courses with Zoe Powell and Mitch Iberg of Studio Alluvium and online Studio Sessions with ceramic artists through Nicole Seisler's A-B Projects opened up a world to people interested in research-through-making, in critical thinking of creative practice, of connections between material experimentation and ecological concern and care.

DEVELOPING RESEARCH

VIGILANT MOURNING

I’m interested in the process from the terraforming by human interference to the deconstruction of the formation by a “natural disaster” which exposes the fragility/vulnerability of the site; to the terrestrial debris that occurs in the fallout from the disruption; to the potential re-forming if it suits human needs.

Documenting the debris & destruction that occurs as it relates to me personally – in my body, also in the effects on my life – and as it relates more broadly socially. My observations – what I pay attention to– are a form of close listening, vigilant mourning.

TOO MUCH INFORMATION

https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/3420465/3420466

TERRESTRIAL DEBRIS - NOTION

https://jumpy-boron-693.notion.site/terrestrial-debris-terre5-3c0c347aa70e44388b98e316a63c90f3

CAPTURE \ NATURE

Something happened when I moved...

Since I started working with clay, my practice and my life have changed drastically. 

I realized that I have always been a transdisciplinary practitioner, however, when I have attempted to bring together ideas and projects across fields, I have run up against institutional barriers, in corporate and academic worlds - as well as in the field of writing itself - and it has taken a huge amount of effort and cycles of doubt-to-production to achieve what seemed to me very common-sense ambitions. Sometimes I could call my interests "interdisciplinary" or "multidisciplinary," but always with the sense that I was undermining my own work by going outside of the parameters of my field.

It was a huge relief to discover that there were communities who were interested in exactly what I was interested in and coming up against the same issues. 

WHAT IS CLAY?

Clay deposit on Hightown beach north of Liverpool 2023

https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/collections/museum-of-liverpool-collections/archaeology/meols

sound

movement

material

I am fascinated by the simplicity and the complexity of clay. 

How, with just a small bit of effort, it is possible to find clay nearly everywhere. How the finding of the clay requires research that engages with the history of the place, and observation that engages with the present of it.

The materiality of clay is immediate. It can be an inert presence, unnoticed; or it can be active, utilitarian, desired. The same material can take the shape of a building foundation; or a personal adornment.

The chemistry of clay is both simple and impossible. A person could weigh and measure and note and math it; or learn via process and elimination, through experimentation,

TRIAL & ERROR

VISIBILITY

                   [ INVISIBILITY ]

This project started in 2021. I have always been curious and sad about the dead animals that are killed by automobiles and then left to decompose on the road, and given the accurate name of roadkill. The invisibility of the animals, as well as the offhand violence implicit in the word roadkill, has always disturbed me. At various points over the years, I thought about taking pictures of these animals, but it felt like it was a weird and gross idea. I was diagnosed with cancer for the first time in fall 2021, at a time when I was already struggling emotionally and mentally, and dealing with a lot of heavy issues. I was already trying to explore how to grieve and mourn. At the time, California was in a long-term drought, and Lake Casitas, which I passed by as I drove the 150 through the mountains from Ojai to Santa Barbara and back several times a week, was at a record low. Additionally, the mountains were unrecovered from the Thomas Fire of 2015. Subsequently, there came a point when every day that I drove the 150 there was at least one, if not several, new animals that were dead on the road, as they foraged nearer and nearer to the lake seeking water. At one point, there were three deer in various states of decomposition. After the third one, I decided to get out of my car and take pictures of the newest one. It was a strangely scary barrier for me to cross - from being a body in a car to a body on the road. I became vulnerable and highly aware in ways I had not expected. From that moment, this project began. Here, I am retroactively and progressively documenting the process of the evolution of the project.

SCORES

           audible

       visual

   physical

I turned to clay.

TERRESTRIAL

DEBRIS