Momentum Tulsa opens a week from tomorrow. I'm going to Tulsa this weekend to begin putting my installation together (the most exciting part!). Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition and Invisible Arts put together this great preview video on the Spotlight artists for this year's Momentum Tulsa exhibition. It overviews my project, as well as the other two Spotlight Artists and the work they are creating for the show. After watching this, I'm even more excited about seeing their projects in completion than I was already! Check it out..
Things are coming together on the Saprobia project. I was able to get some finalized photos of a couple of phases today, which I will share with you in the next week or so. Things have been a little silent around here simply because of the amount of time and energy going into this work. Less than a month to go...
The "Saprobia" project is coming along. I've had a few different phases going at the same time that I was able to wrap up this weekend... More on those soon. Some of the phases are comprised almost entirely from materials foraged from their respective tree, while others are more fiber based with limited foraged elements. I'm looking forward to the installation, and intermingling these unique phases of the work in the staged forest floor setting. Seeing the pieces come together is exciting, but the installation itself is by far the part that's most fun.
The words from the first part of my introduction to this project describe the biogeochemical cycles continuously occurring over time in natural ecosystems. Rarely do we think of a tree as a product of the growth and death of all other trees in that place before it... Perhaps as the offspring of another tree's seed, but rarely as an organism nourished by the same building blocks that it will one day again become... in order to support life going forward.
Saprobia communicates this idea through the representation of a tree as a decomposer organism that would contribute in returning it to the soil to continue the cycle. The project manifests as an installation of various forms of fungi, each constructed from components of a certain species of tree. These saprobic representations of a species connect the viewer's perception to the continuity of forest mineral cycling and the interconnectedness of all organisms in an ecosystem, past and present.
Saprobia poses the question of what is next for the elements that once comprised a plant. How will they contribute to other life going forward? How can so small a thing have such an impact? The balance and interaction within nature transforms into a muse for our rejuvenation and strength.
Photos: 1. dye jars with baldcypress leaves, eastern red cedar heart wood, and black walnut hulls 2. working with honeylocust leaves 3. knitting with seed of cottonwood
I've been hinting around enough, but haven't actually officially announced my recent big news... Earlier this summer I submitted a proposal and was selected to be one of three Spotlight Artists for the Momentum Tulsa exhibition that will open in October! This is a huge honor and I am so thankful to Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition and the curators, Emily Kern and Krystle Brewer, for this amazing opportunity!
You will find out more about my project, an installation entitled "Saprobia", as the weeks go on. I plan to continue posting workspace snippets and progress photos. This project has already pushed me to try out new techniques and media that I have not worked with before, which has been both enlightening and inspiring.
I'm excited to share more about my installation, the individual pieces that will be a part of it, and the greater concept that it embodies. For now, here are a couple of images from recent stages.
