Traversal(s), 2025. Foraged wood and egg tempera with soil and lake pigments
My site specific installation Traversal(s) is part of the 2025 edition of Art in the Wild, an outdoor art exhibition at Wildwood Park in Harrisburg, PA. The theme of this year’s exhibition is Pathways. Pathways offer opportunities for movement, discovery, sustenance, shelter. They are an important component of mapping, which is a means of establishing a relationship with place. I am fascinated with the ways human cultures all over the world have mapped their environment, and how more-than-human beings–from ants to waterfowl to trees to mycellia–use their senses and instincts to navigate their world via uniquely forged pathways. Wildwood Park, which centers around a wetland habitat, consists of thousands of overlapping and intertwining pathways reflecting the biodiversity and ecological resilience found within.
My piece Traversal(s) is inspired by a quote from poet and environmental activist Wendell Berry: “A path is little more than a habit that comes with knowledge of a place. It is a sort of ritual of familiarity. As a form, it is a form of contact with a known landscape.” The piece, constructed from tree trunks, references two kinds of pathways. My walks through Wildwood as I became acquainted with the landscape, gathering soil, rocks, plants, and stumps along the way, are reproduced with wood burning. These marks are layered with visual patterns of living beings that forge their own pathways through the park via skin, wings, seeds, and scales: Eastern Ratsnake, American Lotus, Cattail, Downy Woodpecker, Green Darner Dragonfly, and Redear Sunfish. They are painted with egg tempera paint using pigment I made from plants and soil foraged at Wildwood.
The aim of the installation is to create an artwork that highlights and reflects the often invisible patterns and pathways present throughout the Park and ignites curiosity amongst human visitors about the ways that diverse living beings move through the landscape.
