topographies
“Trembling Giant” is an installation of two works created in residency at Artshack Brooklyn for the exhibition Biomineral Topographies. On the wall, the Topographic Study extrudes a GIS map of the 106-acre site of the Pando Aspen Clone, the largest tree in the world. Built from the most accurate and up-to-date map of the landscape in 2024, the piece is designed to last as a topographic record of the site far into the future, beyond paper or digital maps, when the geologic setting itself has changed beyond recognition.
When seen from the street outside the gallery, this wall piece is overlaid by an 11-ft embroidered Foliage Density Map, which abstracts the same site, using aerial imagery from Google Maps and DNA mapping of the clonal aspen colony. On sunny days, the beaded surface casts shadows onto the topography, projecting the tree’s growth patterns across its hillside environment. At night, the surface glitters with light, recalling aspen’s shimmering leaves in moonlight.
Trembling Giant (Topographic Study), 2024. Bisque-fired stoneware, wire, wood; 57” x 36” x 9”
Trembling Giant (Foliage Density), 2024. Silk organza, silk thread, glass beads, wood; 120” h x 57” w
37°22’46”N 118°09’42”W, 1994 (Methuselah, 1994), 2023. Bisque Fired Stoneware. 40” x 47” x 12”
Bristlecone pines are among the most beautiful trees on earth for their ability to convey time through form; a single tree can live past 5,000 years. Access to the Bristlecone Pine Forest is carefully managed by the forest service in order to preserve their fragile ecosystem. Working with clay, I’ve come to know this rugged dolomitic landscape: four square miles of forest, extruded up from a 1994 USGS map. Trees this old live in a liminality between geologic and human time. We age them in our minds by the human events they’ve overlapped with - going as far back as ancient Egypt. Fired clay exists on this timeline, too - as long as 10,000+ years. In bisque firing this (bringing the clay only partially to final temperature) - it exists somewhere between mud and monument, to one day live in the geologic layer it describes.
38°31′30″N 111°45′00″W (Pando), 2023. Bisque-Fired Stoneware and Wire; 31” x 52.5” x 5”
Created in residency with the Friends of Pando, 38°31′30″N 111°45′00″W (Pando) is a hanging sculpture that maps the root system of the 106 acre Pando Aspen Tree. A clonal organism, Pando’s 4,400 individual stems grow from a single root system, making it the largest known organism on earth.
Inoculated Landscapes 1-3, 2024. Ceramic, mycelium, acrylic.
Inoculated Landscape 1: 4.5” x 14” x 14”
Inoculated Landscape 2 (pictured above): 7.5” x 14” x 14”
Inoculated Landscape 3: 7.5” x 18” x 18”
“Inoculated Landscapes” is a series of three hand-built ceramic sculptures that have been planted with live oyster mycelium in reference to the entanglement of geology and ecology in the more than human world.
During the course of the exhibition, visitors are encouraged to spray the sculptures with water and harvest and cook the oyster mushrooms as they ripen.
