Artist Statement:
The Ghost Trees project is a 15 year exploration of loss, longing, and the search for home. The project investigates the liminal space between what was, what is and what will be in an ever-changing world.
Ghost Trees is an investigation of the bald cypress trees in the Cape Fear River basin in coastal North Carolina. The trees are dying due to saltwater intrusion from climate change. The project explores the liminal space between what was, what is and what will be in an ever-changing world. There are countless ghost forests along the U.S. coast of the Atlantic Ocean, from Maine to Florida.
The Ghost Trees project is an exploration of grief and awe, loss and beauty. The photographs of the trees represent grief related to global losses due to the climate crisis as well as my own personal losses –my mother’s relapse with addiction in her later life, her near death by suicide, and her death several years later from cancer. The project became a deepening quest for meaning and new ways of seeing while coming to terms with a degenerative eye disorder diagnosis.
My previous work highlighted sharp focus and deep depth of field. I had tried for years to find an entry into a representation of how I see and feel the world through photography, but all attempts failed until Ghost Trees. Ghost Trees served as a portal into embracing what is and discovering new ways of seeing.
Loss and beauty have the power to transform us. I hope the viewer senses both the loss and beauty of these trees and feels inspired to preserve the beauty of nature before it is lost.
My photography is a contemporary inquiry into psychological space, place, narrative, memory, loss, longing and healing. I am curious about the ways in which outer landscapes are equivalents of the inner landscape of emotional states.
This project is made possible, in part, by a 2016-2017 Regional Artist Project Grant award from The Arts Council of Wilmington and New Hanover County.
AWARDS
Art of the Image ’19. Art in Bloom Gallery and theArtWorks. Juror Beth Handler Riebe. First Place Award Winner for “The Answer Lies Within” from the Ghost Trees project.
BOOK COVER
“Fading Echoes” image from the Ghost Trees series is featured on the cover of Readiness by Mark Cox. Readiness is a beautiful book of meditative prose poems on the joys and struggles of being human.
