Destruction and transformation are two organic processes that go hand-in-hand. Growing up in rural South Carolina, I have personal experiences with agriculture, taking part in the performance of plowing or burning fields for new growth. The story of the landscape is not just a story of healing but also a story of home and belonging.
Using plaster, photography, and painting, I regard destruction and ephemerality as a space for new beginnings rather than loss. By leaning into the porous alchemy of plaster, I physically submerge, imprint, and transfer personal imagery of my local landscape to conceptually wrestle with my longing for the nature of home. In the process, the liquid plaster absorbs the ink of the image; in this transition color and details are lost in translation. A visual burying and unburying of imagery emerges to highlight the connections between destruction and transformation.
My surfaces dance between abstraction and representation through the flicker of images depicting Spanish moss, burning fields, barnyards, and marshes. The details lost in the photo transfer or plaster process, bring the work to a space of memory or time. Submerged broken pieces, and embedded cast shapes disorient what came first in the process. Throughout my work I search for self-reflection and celebrate the discoveries offered in the failures to document or hold a place or memory. I embrace the lessons and stories we could learn from the nonhuman and effortless giving of the land I have witnessed in my upbringing.