Swailing

Temporary Site-Specific Installation:
Project Space, The Charlotte Street Foundation, Kansas City, MO.

Curated by Kate Hackman.  

Cut paper, cotton fabric, adhesive vinyl, graphite drawings, graphite prints.

2011

Swailing: the prescribed burning of prairie or marshland.  

The prescribed burns of the Midwest have been a mystery to me, both for their spectacle, and for what they reveal in their wake.

This installation is inspired by walking through a field after a burn. Here I smell smoke in my hair and on my hands. The monotone of the March landscape is now a charcoal flatness. Each footstep I take sends up a plume of ash. The grasses lie in charred piles. When I touch them they crumble in my hands. Branches leave stenciled prints against the ground.