The Root Community, August 2024

Limbsnapping Festival

I was invited to present my work at the annual Limbsnapping Festival at The Root Community in upstate New York. I created an installation in a treehouse in the middle of the woods — very fun! The exhibit I installed in this treehouse included gel block prints, photographs, wire and papier mache sculpture, cyanotypes, and turmeric anthotype prints. I also co-led an art and writing workshop with dear friend and brilliant artist, Kate Quarfordt. In this workshop, we encouraged participants to spend time with art we created and then write about their personal experiences based on feelings that the art evoked.

I imagined my treehouse installation to be a communion with my ancestors — thinking of the Atlantic Ocean as a meeting place. I made a sculpture out of papier mache and fabric to represent a portal opening in the ocean. It included one papier mache sculpted hand reaching up from the ground, and another suspended in the air reaching down. My ancestors were kidnapped and forced through doors of no return onto harrowing ships, some dying at sea, some adapting to harsh, unfamiliar lands. I imagine a new type of door and new relationship with the sea and land — of connection, possibility, softness, life, and generation.

The questions I asked myself in the making of this work inform much of what I make now: How can I learn from those who have come before? How can I dream of a space apart from annihilation where care, creation, and collective endurance abound? What happens when I behold the needs of all beings, including the Earth, and the tender, powerful part of humanity that is determined to thrive no matter what?