How light and soil are in us (swamp and slope), 2025

This large‑scale drawing and monotype printmaking installation considers deep-time carbon cycles, contemporary forest ecologies, and the entanglements between them. Developed over four years of returning to the Monument Creek Wildfire site and informed by visual studies of ancient Black Country swamps that created much of the coal that powered the industrial revolution, the work evokes the intense visual ‘noise’ of the swamp and burn - tangled carbonised trunks, dense regrowth, steep slopes and intricate forest‑floor detail. Its underlying grid structure recalls the mapping and parcelling of land associated with industrial extraction, in both mining and forestry. The title references Susan Griffin’s prose Forest: The Way We Stand, aligning the work with ecofeminist thought and the more‑than‑human perspective of trees. In bringing these landscapes into dialogue, the installation highlights the urgency of protecting living forest systems as one of the most immediate responses to climate change.

Materials: Ink made from wildfire-derived charcoal, willow, fireweed, alder, carbonized soil, and elderberry, collected at Monument Creek Wildfire (clearcut R14738) on sn̓ʕay̓ckstx (Sinixt) Territory BC, coal from Black Country Living Museum, Dudley UK, and carbon black ink on paper. Industrial plywood used for monoprints.