These found and collected objects of nature become re-contextualized with crocheted thread coverings in an attempt to “prop up” or “put back” what has been abandoned, broken. The attentive caring and support structures that surround the objects investigate the relationship between nurturing and controlling nature. My interest in them as objects extends to the space they occupy. Much of my work stems from the notion of landscape and how we not just experience, but also negotiate with the natural world. Do we feel warm and fuzzy, or do we distance ourselves? How do we “care” for that which we depend upon?

My very intimate and slow engagement with the forms is about both observation and discovery. As I work, I anticipate the transformation that happens by obscuring their surfaces with threads, changing or heightening my experience in ways that reference ideas of beauty, desire and the search for what is ideal. As in guilding, these false “skins” imbue the objects with an assumed desirability or value; the wrapping becomes an act of veneration. Although futile in its attempt at archiving and preservation, there is the desire to suggest optimism. My meticulous act of crocheting mimics the instinct to nurture and protect what is viable, what is becoming precious.