2018

Elephant Butte Lake Artist Residency, New Mexico: Conversations with the Landscape

Pilgrimage: an opportunity, a challenge to every day life, a soulful journey, a chance at discovery, purposeful wandering in uncharted territory, a longing set in motion.

Armed with openness, receptivity and attentiveness I accept the invitation, twice, returning a second year to this residency in the Chihuahuan high desert. Like a pilgrim, I hunger for a taste of mystery, this desert landscape so different from the flora and fauna of my home in Minnesota. What will I uncover here? What will I bear witness to as I traverse the land? What will speak to me? What is the conversation I need to be having?
Every new environment inspires my creativity and has an effect on my work. I draw from the vegetation and land for my paper pulp and dyeing process: the shapes and lines of the natural surroundings for my forms and mark-making. I enjoy the alchemic fusion of sun, earth, air and water into organic forms. I moodle about the landscape gathering from the earth; a withered plant fiber from the desert willow, an old sycamore seed pod, cactus needles, and clay from the earth. These gifts become the pulp from which I create. Forms and vessels which speak to me: mirrors of my inner landscape offering a sense of belonging to my body, my body as this earth.