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My sister and I called it the wishing tree, a willow growing between a tar-patched road and an old New England stone wall. When we were young, our dad would take us there and ask us to share our wishes. Over time, the willow became inseparable from our memories of childhood.
For a long time, the tree remained unchanged in my memory, even as the years around it moved forward. The willow eventually died, and when I returned to the site years later only fragments of its bark and rotted branches remained. The physical place no longer matched the one I had continued to carry with me. The project grew from that distance between the remembered place and the physical one, and from the question of what happens to a memory after the landscape that held it has changed or disappeared.
My sister and I called it the wishing tree, a willow growing between a tar-patched road and an old New England stone wall. When we were young, our dad would take us there and ask us to share our wishes. Over time, the willow became inseparable from our memories of childhood.
For a long time, the tree remained unchanged in my memory, even as the years around it moved forward. The willow eventually died, and when I returned to the site years later only fragments of its bark and rotted branches remained. The physical place no longer matched the one I had continued to carry with me. The project grew from that distance between the remembered place and the physical one, and from the question of what happens to a memory after the landscape that held it has changed or disappeared.
The work combines photographs with rocks, wood, molded silicone, and air. Images printed on transparency film are suspended inside pockets within the silicone. Vacuum pumps remove and release air, causing the photographs to bend, collapse, press against the surface, and pull away from it. The images appear unstable, caught between preservation and deformation, as though the material itself is trying to hold onto them while also pushing them out of shape.
The work combines photographs with rocks, wood, molded silicone, and air. Images printed on transparency film are suspended inside pockets within the silicone. Vacuum pumps remove and release air, causing the photographs to bend, collapse, press against the surface, and pull away from it. The images appear unstable, caught between preservation and deformation, as though the material itself is trying to hold onto them while also pushing them out of shape.
I began to think of memory in a similar way, not as an exact record of a place, but as a material that stretches, hardens, collapses, and reforms around what has been lost. The act of making the work became a way of physically transferring the memory out of the landscape and into a new object. Photographs, materials, movements, and forms taken from or connected to the original site were separated from their previous context and brought together inside another structure. In that process, the memory was not preserved unchanged. It was recontextualized, compressed, distorted, and made physical again.
I began to think of memory in a similar way, not as an exact record of a place, but as a material that stretches, hardens, collapses, and reforms around what has been lost. The act of making the work became a way of physically transferring the memory out of the landscape and into a new object. Photographs, materials, movements, and forms taken from or connected to the original site were separated from their previous context and brought together inside another structure. In that process, the memory was not preserved unchanged. It was recontextualized, compressed, distorted, and made physical again.
My sister and I called it the wishing tree, a willow growing between a tar-patched road and an old New England stone wall. When we were young, our dad would take us there and ask us to share our wishes. Over time, the willow became inseparable from our memories of childhood.
For a long time, the tree remained unchanged in my memory, even as the years around it moved forward. The willow eventually died, and when I returned to the site years later only fragments of its bark and rotted branches remained. The physical place no longer matched the one I had continued to carry with me. The project grew from that distance between the remembered place and the physical one, and from the question of what happens to a memory after the landscape that held it has changed or disappeared.
The work combines photographs with rocks, wood, molded silicone, and air. Images printed on transparency film are suspended inside pockets within the silicone. Vacuum pumps remove and release air, causing the photographs to bend, collapse, press against the surface, and pull away from it. The images appear unstable, caught between preservation and deformation, as though the material itself is trying to hold onto them while also pushing them out of shape.
I began to think of memory in a similar way, not as an exact record of a place, but as a material that stretches, hardens, collapses, and reforms around what has been lost. The act of making the work became a way of physically transferring the memory out of the landscape and into a new object. Photographs, materials, movements, and forms taken from or connected to the original site were separated from their previous context and brought together inside another structure. In that process, the memory was not preserved unchanged. It was recontextualized, compressed, distorted, and made physical again.