erosion

December 3, 2022

Recently, I have been entirely immersed in this concept: water’s incredible ability to dissolve substances literally transformed the Earth. Carving out space for itself. Unintentionally creating an environment that can sustain life.

I imagine water creeping across the rocky terrain. Its erosive power emanates from patience, from its trust in gravity and in time. Ceaselessly softening surface. Wearing it away. Grinding. Gnawing…

It is this gnawing that nudges me towards notions of loss. 

Loss is often referred to, described, as a void…a pit. An empty space within you, your body. Maybe because it’s implied in the word “loss” that there is an absence of something that used to exist…inhabit… 

To me, loss feels more like a wedge. Something simultaneously sharp and dull lodged into my ribs…my sternum. The bone.

Is it an unfamiliar object? Or something that existed before, but has now shifted? Maybe the temperature is what has changed; like water shifting from one state to another, liquid becoming ice. Expanding. Rigid. 

My actual question is: 

How do I continue connecting with someone beyond their presence? 

I know objects can function this way… what about walls? From cave drawings to Luftmalerei to murals of the Mexican Revolution to graffiti, we’ve always been looking at the structures that divide us, contain us, protect us. These walls know more history than we can see. They hold transient performance and discourse.

This is a practice of becoming. Birth, death, rebirth, redeath…

storm. destruction. seed. searching…

Maybe it is the water within us that fuels the need not necessarily to find space for ourselves, for our lives, but make it. It is the water within me instigating this erosive process. Subtle, improvisational. Collaborating with the weight of my body, and defined by time.

These wall drawings (8ft tall by 10-22ft wide) were developed by hand and on site without a pre-determined image. Each was made in a short period of time (13 hours to 2 days) and were temporary— all are now concealed behind a few layers of white paint.