Terroir Series

Typically used to describe wine, terroir literally translated, means earth, or soil. But it also encompasses the mineralogy, climate, region, weather, altitude, that defines place. I think of my work as reflective of the specificity of place. With a great reverence for the earth and it's resiliency, this body of work celebrates our relationship with the soil beneath our feet, in sculpture, paintings and video.  One could think of it as a landscape painting.

 

My work explores the textural richness of layers of the commonplace: the musty piles of compost (Compost Print), or the cloven hooves, farm boots, and tractor imprints in a muddy pasture that write the farm’s routine like a Braille narrative. Paddocks and barnyards are areas where man and animal intersect, places where complexity of the covenant between man and beast is lived out. Materials of the farm hold meaning, history, are alive and responsive; they shift and change in the weather, with the seasons. Time becomes an active element in the work, creating a performance. This is where my work and I are grounded, in the security of knowing place.

Morning Routine, Oxen, canvas, earth from oxen pasture, 5x5', 2015

Morning Routine, Oxen, canvas, earth from oxen pasture, 5x5', 2015

Gaia, earth (cob) and steel, made while at the Clemmons Family Farm, 2x3', 2016

Gaia, earth (cob) and steel, made while at the Clemmons Family Farm, 2x3', 2016