Emergent Earth Forms

Abstract

This practice-led research traces my deepening relationship with nonhuman companions in familiar and beloved places. Painting and drawing processes have developed in response to diverse materials and collaborations with the nonhuman on flexible and transportable substrates. Through exploratory modes of making, site, bodies, action and memory are integrated as a site-responsive choreography. This research fosters a non-binary, intuitive, and embodied approach to matter and spirit by incorporating non-Western and holistic approaches within contemporary artmaking. The agency of the nonhuman (trees, birds, rocks, and clay pigment) is acknowledged: their developmental growth over time is traced through indexical textures, which link to the genesis of their creation and constant transformation. Through playful and intuitive improvisation, the spaces between the indexical, my body, and site are activated through multi-vocal and rhythmic mapping, in an interplay between abstraction and representation.