Layering paper pulp on paper pulp, I feel as a Rock. This collection of paintings are reenactments of geological time. Some are whole, some are fragments; compositions composed and compositions serendipitous. Recycled paper, found earth pigments, sizing. 2023-2025

We are the strata. On the wall on the right, you'll see Soiled, 2024. Re-soiled cloth diapers are layered with earth pigments harvested from diverse landscapes, forming strata that echo both the cycles of maternal care and the planet’s own nurturing rhythms. On the floor is Pressed for Time, 2025. Found material is cut and dyed with earth, weighed down by rock and pulp. Fragments on the left wall are titled Fail Artifacts, 2024. Paper pulp studio debris from the artistic process is layered, pressure applied, and then cross-sectioned.

I extract both form and colour from rocks I have brought to my studio, wrapping kin in wet cloth and allowing the material to dry onto kin’s form before removing the rock, leaving behind a ghostly presence. Through this process, colour leeches faintly into the cloth and the rock’s form is preserved. The resulting traces evoke the elusiveness of this mode of knowing; being-with.

I have attempted to relinquish much of my control over the process of drying these works. Keeping the size of each paper the same, I dry sheets among rocks, soil, and other outdoor surfaces, whose tannins and protrusions encourage the sheets to dry in certain shapes with certain colourations.

I reference Richard Long’s ephemeral trace left in the grass by adopting its title and exploring what it might mean to inhabit the temporality of a rock. Each rock in this modular, expanding collection—both foraged and gifted—is partially encased in recycled paper pulp, allowing the colour and character of each stone to remain visible. My fingerprints evidenced in the pulp record my physical interaction with each rock being. When installed, the rocks form a line, reminiscent of how pebbles arrange kinselves along the edge of a riverbed under the influence of flowing water. Drawing on Thomas Nail’s Theory of the Earth, which frames the planet as a system in constant motion, this work emphasizes the fluidity of matter. The aim is for my line to be perceived as equally ephemeral as Long’s, shaped by human gesture and geological time. The line continues outdoors, with rocks encased in abaca fibres, slowly weathering away and transforming into compost.

By playing with presence and absence, Energy Loops enact a closed circuit of give-and-take. The Cave Heart appropriates the silhouette of a local stone, cast in recycled paper pulp and filled with earth pigments gathered through site-based foraging, pilgrimage, and generous gifts.

Forming mud with one’s hands reflects a seemingly universal impulse to engage with matter and create form, a gesture that transcends age, culture, and epoch. What begins in childhood as instinctual play becomes a deliberate and reflective visual language. This is part of a growing collection of mud pies, composed of recycled paper pulp bases filled with mud and natural pigments, taking the form of circles and concentric rings, echoing patterns found in pooling water, sedimentary layers, and embryonic growth.

Poem and Exhibition Text by Katie Lawson

Brought to our knees to feel as a Rock This exhibition is the culmination of my research-creation practice over two years of the MFA program at Western University. It encompasses the (re)connecting with Land through found colour from rock, the mark-making by transformation, the repurposing of found materials to echo geological formations, and the re-enactment of deep time using paper pulp. Creating modular, repeated, yet distinct, components that build into a larger whole, the work expresses the universe’s sculptural tendencies. To feel as a rock is to have awareness without self. To feel as a rock is to embrace and contribute to geological and other nonhuman processes. To feel as a rock is to escape human notions of time. This work has been made possible by the support from family, friends, and colleagues; my supervisor Sheri Osden Nault, my partner, my kids, my cohort, the ecologies I inhabit, and the enduring caretaking of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak and Attawandaron. I am grateful to share this place with a diverse world of flora, fauna, fungi, microbes, soil, and rocks, each with kin’s own life and entangled relationships. Kin's presence continue to guide my art practice.