To Leave

The ephemeral beauty of nature lies not just in living organisms but also in their inevitable decay.

This morning, while examining “deeper than that” a private living sculpture art installation featuring indigenous plants, I was struck by the fading loveliness of the Rosinweed leaves as they withered. Contemplating the homophones “leaf”, “leave” and “leaves”, I pondered how societies historically understood the ecological value of allowing foliage to persist even after senescence. Is that why we call these objects a verb?

Leaves that have left a plant continue to nourish the soil and its microbial inhabitants even in death. Their decaying forms hold moisture, shade the living organisms in the ground, and provide nutrients as they return to earth, building a balanced ecology that sustains urban landscapes. They are an important material natures uses in its engineering of the water table.

Though a single leaf may seem a small, ephemeral thing, in aggregate and over time, the leaves left behind establish and uphold the very foundations of life.

Their decay is not an end but rather a beginning - a quiet, essential recycling of energy and matter that allows new growth to emerge.

In both the noun and the verb there are layers of beauty, and layers of ecological purpose, in the leaves left to molder where they fall. An ecosystem thrives on this gift of decay, using the ephemeral to fuel the eternal. Such is the profound, poignant cycle that the installation’s Rosinweed specimens, even as they bend and brown, help perpetuate. Out of seeming loss, abundance; out of death, life.

Leave your leaves and be grateful for their beauty as nouns and as verbs.

The white pedestal?

When I started in the MFAH Glassell School block program, I needed pedestals for my smaller sculptures. I made stark white cubes as I saw in museums and galleries.

Over the years, my work has transitioned to tell a specific story. I make work to reveal the beauty in diversity, the messiness in the natural world and the connections between all living things on the planet. And most importantly, I work to inspire society to step into a rhythm that will flow with the natural world and celebrate the beauty in its messiness. My work conflicts with borders that separate, clean lines that divide and sterile objects.

The white cube pedestals are a symptom of sameness, monocultures and sterile environments, a symptom of me wanting to ” look “ like I belong and fit in. A change is an imminent.

I am leting my eyes and mind play with how objects that physically support my work should look. Work that reimagines urban landscapes to balance humanity and natural systems should not be sterile cubes. What should, - what could they be?

The images below are some thoughts I am considering. .

Rocks

Bricks

Stones or concrete.

Cracks

Dried plant material

Electrical wire

Upcycled lawn furniture.

Palm tree trunk skin

Salvaged construction site rotting root with interesting chain link necklace imbedded across her shoulders.

Rumblings - work in progress-

Neonicotinoids disturb bumble bee and flies sleep and ability to know when to forage. It is banned in the EU and not in the US. This isn’t enough, these products used in urban gardens harm bees. Articles like these inspire me to plug on.

I have lost count

artist statements are also works in progress

as it sits

RUMBLINGS

Artist statement

A rumbling in the distance is nature's way to alert living creatures to their environment.

Rumblings is a work in progress, a monumental collection of fifty 30" X 44" watercolor monotypes that draw attention to the endangered knowledge of the 20,000 species of wild bees.

In these works, I carefully manipulate watercolor ink, and solvent into a chaos of infinitely miniscule paint particles. The materials are interconnected across the over-size monotypes, paralleling the synergistic, aqueous effects of the untold bee species' magnetic attraction to golden dust and their corresponding fragility due to the applied chemicals that flood residential gardens and industrial agriculture. Closely studying their exceptional ability to buzz and pollinate with their exceptional pollen-adhering bodies, I use abstraction and zoom in to depict the organized mayhem of their movements.

The installation of Rumblings inspires curiosity, alerting all viewers to pay attention, asking them to consider the unintended consequences of their actions in our-interconnected micro ecosystems. It is a resounding call to decrease pesticide usage, provide habitats for nesting, and plant native indigenous plants providing nectar for the bees that are responsible for 70% of the foods we eat.

What I do not know is when and where they will be installed, when that is in the picture I may find ways to connect the pieces visually. That will have an impact on the statement. Until the plant beautiful native plants.

Recording natural history - ”Mute Testimony”

Recording natural history

Mute Testimony.

3” X 6” X 4”

bronze

phot by Nash Baker

A fossil is our planet’s recorded history, the memoir of a life in a place, time, ecology, and evidence of global warming. It is Endangered Knowledge.

Many processes in art and the natural world lead to fossilization, including casting or mold making. I crafted a mold of a fossil that one of my children found at my son Griffin’s 8th birthday party in El Paso, Texas. It was a fossil hunting party at Cerro de Cristo Rey. (The intersection of two countries and three states, a special place.) A prehistoric relic, now a family treasure, I thought it would be meaningful to make a mold and cast it in bronze for each of my two children, a reminder of their childhood. A mold-of-a-mold a fossil-of-a-fossil. I found the redundancy poetic.

My son is now 31 years old. I have probably walked by the fossil once a day since Griffin was eight years old and did not think twice about it. Casting, it has forced me to think about the form and its value as an object of art. Evidence of aquatic life resurrected from the middle of the Chihuahuan desert— This poetic symbol of desertification will find meaningful ways to wander across disciplines into future environmental works.

Hearing, “this desert was once an ocean.” did not use to phase me. Thinking about the mineral remnant of a sea creature surfacing in one of the driest terrains in the US gives me pause; it makes me consider how we can live our urban lives and preserve natural systems.

I cast three additional fossils to share with others who are interested in natural history; two are finished in a natural patina and one in a contemporary finish — polished stainless steel.

Traces of ancient life tell story of early diversity in marine ecosystems

Stainless Steel finish changes everything 🤔 more to come