PERFORMANCE WORK
BURNFIELD BODIES (SPRING, 2025)
Can a single soul hold the grief of a forest, if only for a moment?
In lieu of the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex Fire, which burned 86,509 acres of the Santa Cruz Mountain forests and 97% of Big Basin, I return to this place. As new growth bubbles over charcoaled bodies, earth meets sky. And I remember. Shards of charcoal encounter my form and seep under my skin. In this place I am reminded of all that has come before me and all that will pass me by.
Maybe remembering is its own kind of tending. Maybe feeling the forest’s grief is necessary for us to grow.
Grief is not the opposite of hope but its foundation: a practice of loving the world enough to mourn it, of nurturing death and life alike.
Can a single soul hold the grief of a forest, if only for a moment?
In lieu of the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex Fire, which burned 86,509 acres of the Santa Cruz Mountain forests and 97% of Big Basin, I return to this place. As new growth bubbles over charcoaled bodies, earth meets sky. And I remember. Shards of charcoal encounter my form and seep under my skin. In this place I am reminded of all that has come before me and all that will pass me by.
Maybe remembering is its own kind of tending. Maybe feeling the forest’s grief is necessary for us to grow.
Grief is not the opposite of hope but its foundation: a practice of loving the world enough to mourn it, of nurturing death and life alike.
SUSPENSION SERIES (WINTER, 2025)
I am the silence the waves break upon. I am the break in a breath.
What is that moment? The feeling of standing at a precipice. As the shore’s sand shifts with the changing tide, I see the wave of change approaching. Something inside me yearns to rest there, cradled in the stillness at the center of the ever-changing world.
Infinity spills down and aches to return to itself. My heart aches for all that passes me by. I’m glad it does. I crave that stillness.
And still the world carries me along. And I am suspended somewhere always between moments.
I am the silence the waves break upon. I am the break in a breath.
What is that moment? The feeling of standing at a precipice. As the shore’s sand shifts with the changing tide, I see the wave of change approaching. Something inside me yearns to rest there, cradled in the stillness at the center of the ever-changing world.
Infinity spills down and aches to return to itself. My heart aches for all that passes me by. I’m glad it does. I crave that stillness.
And still the world carries me along. And I am suspended somewhere always between moments.
ABRIDGED
To be rooted in presence from first light to last. I am here.
In stillness, the quieter lives I encounter have space to sing. In silence, I listen for the soft whispers behind the sounds. I listen without the need to comprehend. I observe the unnoticed, a reversal of that which is unearthed. And yet, I wish to be heard.