soil gathered in the aftermath of ICE raids across Los Angeles; first-fall rainwater; Santa Monica ocean water; fossil shell and volcanic ash from Utah; achiote from Central America; cochineal gathered along the 110 freeway bike path; turmeric gifted by friends abroad; and cross-border pigments.
61 x 8 x 2 1/4 approx.
2025
Holding on to the Glowing Edge imagines the emergence of a new landscape. One built from the intertwined ecologies of human histories, plant lineages, geological time, and the quiet labor of insects and water. Each material acts as a living trace: soil bearing the residue of state violence; rainwater marking the beginning of a season; ocean water carrying the pull of tides and memory; ancient minerals shaped by prehistoric pressures; pigments born of plants, insects, and hands that harvested, gifted, or carried them across borders.
Here, water moves through the work as a cleansing force, softening the hardness of impacted soil, cooling what has been burned or ruptured, and opening pathways for transformation. Rain and tide wash through the materials not to erase their histories but to allow them to breathe differently.
Brought together, these elements behave like a terrain in formation. Where human rupture meets the resilience of plant dyes, where insect bodies become color, where ancient earth steadies contemporary pain. The materials interact as if generating their own ecosystem, one that hums with memory, grief, migration, and the ongoing work of survival.
In this charged convergence, the piece evokes the feeling of a world being made in real time: a place where what has been harmed can be tended, where what has been taken can be acknowledged, and where the merging of ecologies suggests the possibility of another kind of ground; one shaped by care, persistence, and a quiet, enduring hope.
