Palimpsest: Artist’s Books & Paper Works 

What is the capacity of written, visual, and body language to animate connective spaces between humans, land, and versions of the self that, in response to narrative, have been forgotten, concealed, or desecrated? What can the body, sensory experience, and materiality reveal when language acts as a form of violent erasure? Palimpsest includes work that explores these questions through image, handmade paper pieces, text, and the structure of the book. Vine covered forest, prairie remnant, drainage ditch, and the remains of the artist’s family home burnt in a forest fire yield materials such as nettle and bittersweet fiber, cattail pollen, plant dyes, charcoal, and the ashes of books. Sound and other sensations experienced in places where human attempts to overwrite long engrained patterns of nature have occurred offer formal elements and metaphor for exploring human relationship, desire, and yearning. The process of scavenging such materials from ruined or compromised sites for the intended purpose of shared human expression provides an opportunity for imagining language as a tool for the sanctification, repair, or re-building of life-affirming inquiry and connection.