Staying connected through pixels for two years makes me think about all the other spaces that fill the screen's edge, are we also connected to them? The shift in camera position reveals more of a coworker's home, how the light shifts across the walls throughout a video call. I moved across the country and continue to use these video platforms to stay connected with my family. It has allowed me to continue to help nurture and care for our family vegetable garden. Going on weekly garden tours, viewing the growth through glitchy and pixelated Facetimes. Getting zoomed in view of a furry pepper plant stem, helping to decode the watermelon pumpkin cross over that volunteered from the composting. The three works Little House on Settle, Front Left Flower Bed, and Ebb and Flow are all created in response to this distanced form of gardening.
Little House on Settle was created by painting with mordants and then dying it in forged black walnut dye. The Black Walnut is a material of connection due to it being both in the vegetable garden in California as well as a tree I live alongside in Baltimore. Front Left Flower Bed produced by holding multiple Facetime calls where my mother took dimensions of the garden beds, relaying each 2x4s dimension. The soft sculpture contains pine shavings, a material choice inspired by the bedding of the family chickens. The latest work, Ebb and Flow being an active response of filling the longing of watching plant life grow alongside me. The soilless hydroponic system was created to fit directly into the window frame of my studio space and is growing flowers to be later used as natural dyes