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

[Placeholder] is a project about holding and being held by place. Through a series of different activities (collaborative work with my Sac State students, experiential research, a residency at an elementary school, a sequence of exhibitions, and the production of visual artworks) I have been investigating our contemporary relationships to land, individually and collectively.

The goal of the [Placeholder] project is to question the ambient worldview wherein people are separate from nature, and entitled to engage in an extraction economy. It lifts up stories of reciprocity, stewardship and relationality in which humans are just one component of a rich and complex fabric of connectivity and relationships. It forefronts the colonial context of unacknowledged genocide and indigenous slavery that we currently operate inside of in California. It acknowledges white supremacy as a foundational element of our institutions and systems, and raises questions about how other false hierarchies of value function similarly in the way humans view more-than-human-life.

It recognizes a damaged relationship between many people and the land they live on, and searches for pathways toward repair.

SWALLOWTAIL Short Film

In the fall of 2024, Eliza Gregory led thirty-five senior students in the Photography BFA program in researching and photographing the landscape of the State Indian Museum and Sutter’s Fort. Students visited the site repeatedly, learning from Native American contemporary artists, culture bearers and tribal ecological knowledge holders as well as State Parks staff. The focus of the ongoing investigations is how to recognize —and, in many cases, attempt to repair — our relationships to the land we live on. Jon Wong, a former student, put together a short film focusing on the student and leader experiences and perspectives on the work and the course. 

FLOODING THE NOTCH

[Placeholder: Flooding the Notch] is an exhibition built with students in the photography BFA program at Sacramento State, presented at Verge Center for the Arts from Nov. 20-Dec. 6. This fall the senior cohort of photography students at Sac State and I have been investigating the floodplain—specifically the Yolo Bypass and its various habitat restoration projects. Under the guidance of John Brennan and Carson Jeffres, we’ve also gotten to meet with state and local government officials, farmers, duck hunters and ecologists to learn more about how this ecosystem functions and has functioned in the past. This exhibition showcases the photography work made during that time.

Thumbnail image and design by Thelma Salomon-Saldivar

Placeholder Swallowtail presentation at SPE West

In November 2025, Eliza Gregory and Jordan Burkhart presented about [Placeholder: Swallowtail] at SPE WEST.

Living Precariously Short Film

In the fall of 2023, Eliza Gregory led students in the Sacramento State University Photography BFA Program on a suite of field trips to do experiential research about relationships to land. The group built an archive of audio recordings and photographs of their experiences and the people, places and institutions they visited, which was used to create a podcast and an exhibition. Jon Wong, a student in the class, filmed our excursions. With direction from Eliza Gregory, and support from the rest of the students, Jon put together a short film focusing on the student experiences and perspectives on the work and the course. 

Rhizome

[Placeholder: Rhizome] brought together projects made with elementary school students at Peregrine School in Davis, photographs printed on panels, the visual identity made in collaboration with Nicole Lavelle for Floodplain Projects Studio. It took place at Axis Gallery in Sacramento in October, 2024.

Artist Residency at the UC Davis Student Farm

For the 2024-25 school year, I will be spending time each week at the Student Farm, founded in 1977, and supporting the nurturing of relationships to land through an agro-ecological lens ever since. Work done at the Farm includes facilitating activities in UC Davis courses, hosting events for visiting groups, working with students interns, and responding to opportunities for collaborative art making within the farm context. [Placeholder: Groundtruthing], an exhibition of the work made at the farm over the year, opens at Axis Gallery in Sacramento on May 2nd, 2025 and runs through June 1st.

Living Precariously: Exhibition & Podcast

[Placeholder: Living Precariously] was an exhibition, podcast and course experience built with students in the photography BFA program at Sacramento State. Presented at Verge Center for the Arts and through Buidling Justice, the exhibition and podcast put forth experiential research investigating relationships to land in the Central Valley and the Bay Area. Participants went 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 and learn more about the project.

Herbarium

From 2022-24 I was an artist in residence at Peregrine School, teaching a class to 3rd-6th graders once a week. Together we experimented with ways to connect ourselves to the land we live on. These experiments 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.