Generously funded by the Kirkland Endowment and Kirkland Travel Fund
Land Acknowledgement:
I would like to acknowledge that Hamilton College is settled on the ancestral lands of the Oneida Nation. I also want to acknowledge that the places I moved through as part of my research in Arizona are the ancestral homelands of the Hohokam, Akimel O’odham, O’odham, Sobaipuri, Tohono O’odham, Ópata, Chiricahua Apache, Hopi, Zuni, Pueblos, Western Apache, Havasupai, and the Southern Paiute. I honor the continuing history and perspectives of Indigenous people.
This project grew out of my deep fascination with the intersections of art and geology, and the marks that humans generally, and I specifically, make on land. I am interested in the boundaries between individual and environment, the places where bodies of flesh and bodies of stone slip, crease, weather, and change.
The idea for this show had been growing in my head for a while, but much of the inspiration and knowledge required to realize it came out of a field studies trip to Arizona this past winter break with Hamilton College’s Geoscience Department. While there, I learned more deeply about the physical cycles of landscapes, measured time in thousand-year increments, discovered beauty and history in rock formations within National Parks and on the side of freeways. The captions for this project seek to document both the artistic significance of each artwork and the geological features present.
A special thank you to my advisor Cat Beck, as well as to Dave Bailey and the Hamilton College Geoscience Department.