[Placeholder]: a project about holding—and being held by—Place

Living Precariously: Exhibition & Podcast

[Placeholder]: Living Precariously was an exhibition created at Verge Center for the Arts by the Sacramento State seniors in photography. The exhibition and podcast puts forth experimental research centered around the Central Valley and the Bay Area. The group has gone out to meet people whose work connects them to land in different ways, or who manifest a relationship to land from particular positionalities, cultures and histories. Click here to see content from the exhibition.

Herbarium

For the last year, I have been an artist in residence at Peregrine School, teaching a class to 3rd-6th graders once a week. Together we experiment with ways to connect ourselves to the land we live on. These experiments have ranged from drawing maps of our neighborhoods to trying to label every plant we can see in the yard to making advertisements from the perspectives of plants who are trying to get humans to propagate them. Herbarium collects these [Placeholder] experiments, many of which make visible our connection (or lack of connection) to plants.

Peregrine AIR

From 2022-24 I worked as an artist in residence at Peregrine School in Davis. During weekly class sessions with 3rd-6th graders, I experimented with workshops that helped students connect to land. We drew maps of our neighborhoods, designed rituals, walked through campus in each others’ footsteps, identified the plants that grow on campus, and eventually curated a sculpture park at school. A portion of this work was exhibited as ‘[Placeholder: Herbarium]” in November 2023.

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

[Placeholder}: Land Acknowledgment was an exhibition created at Verge Center for the Arts by the Sacramento State seniors in photography who took the PHOTO 175 class. It asked questions about relationships to land through quotations, experiential research, and image-making. Click here to see installation views and read the press release.