Artist Statement

My process began with reading. My readings ranged from data on prairie ecosystems to the literary criticism of Robert Pogue Harrison and the poetry of Robert Dana. From my research on the prairie, I chose to use Andropogon Gerardii, one of the major grasses of the Midwestern prairie, in my paper. Harrison’s discussions of the cohabitation of the living with the dead and their inscribed humic histories, as well as his examinations of the place of gardens and forests in the cultural imagination of Western civilization are especially relevant. Robert Dana’s poetry has assured me throughout my studies of the deep interrelation between language and landscape.  

The two visual artists to whom I feel most conceptually indebted are Ann Hamilton and John Cage. By showing the dignity of manual labor from an artistic standpoint, Ann Hamilton’s work helped me see how I could draw from my own appreciation of manual labor that I gained from working as a hired hand on various farms in the mountains of North Carolina. The labor of art-making has fulfilled a similar role in my life as farming and living in-stride with natural rhythms has in the past. John Cage, who along with his more famous performance pieces and compositions made uniquely inspired paper, was perhaps the first artist I learned about who used chance as an artistic device. All of my work embraces chance, from the placement of the letters in “Scroll,” to the natural folds and wrinkles in all of my paper that preserve the memory of their making.

As a result of this chance placement, much of the language in my work functions as both image and text, flitting from one to the other as a viewer’s perception changes, and a relationship between the text and the growth of the grass becomes apparent. I think of some of my pieces as the residue of private meditations on language and my development as someone who feels kindred to the natural world. Paper and the earth are substrates for history — preservers of our collective inheritance. As we become more detached from the natural world, our grip on the very source of our language grows more tenuous.

Learning to trust my process and seeing the physical unfolding of the art has allowed me to cling less fervently my research which before seemed essential to my work. That cycle of immaterial research and physical labor will always be a welcome part of my artistic process.