Memories of Future Fires: Charcoal
2022
From the body of work “Memories of Future Fires,” which explores connections between fire, smoke, climate crisis, loss of homes past and future, and the buildup of microplastics in our ecosystems, blood, and lungs.I interweave petrochemical- and plant-derived materials and landscape imagery as I grapple with the interdependence of ecological and human health and the harmful effects of ongoing fossil fuel extraction. In “Memories of Future Fires,” I transform photos I took of trees in a fire-scarred landscape into woven, petrochemical-derived monofilament. Each image is composed of woven structures whose patterns are informed by flames and cells. The larger works from the series hang in space as ghostly, porous tree bodies. The “Charcoal” series are fragments of the woven tree bodies. Mounted on paper, they reference drawing with charcoal—the black carbon residue of burned wood.
This project was supported in part by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency
