Overgrown - MFA Thesis Exhibition, 2025. Tandem Press Apex Gallery, Madison, WI April 14th-May 9th
The spontaneous appearance of furniture along the sidewalk is an opportunity to question time and the human experience. Mysterious in their origins, discarded chairs serve as a reminder of life and its cycles. Compelled by their candid and fateful compositions, I photograph these found objects as I come across them in the landscape. Through the process of etching, I have the ability to more closely consider these subjects during the meditative tracing of lines onto a copper plate.
In Overgrown, I draw parallels between the dense presence of etching and the delicate absence of debossing. In my etchings, the chairs tangle and align with colorful foliage, sharing a similar fate of suspension. One grows while the other decays, marking arbitrary measures of time as lines accumulate. Skeletal in their wooden forms, the chairs embody human vulnerability with arms, backs, limbs, and legs that are broken, missing, and weathering. Displaced in these scenes, the duos grow unruly. In my debossings, shaped copper plates with etched textures are printed without ink, leaving an image formed by the raised emboss of lines and the recessed deboss of the plate surface, creating an entirely different effect.
Printing in both techniques raises questions about what is left behind in the wake of change. Overgrowth is the final stage of the cycle before complete deterioration. Then the grass is cut and the chairs disappear as mysteriously as they appeared, leaving an indent in the soil that will eventually fade. However, there is a regenerative quality when one considers that something is left behind, even if that is only space for something new. A means to an end becomes a means to a beginning.