Installation captures of images commissioned and created for Placemaking, the annual outdoor Art of Nature exhibition at Blue Heron Nature Preserve. The exhibition runs April-June 2025
I was so pleased when Nancy Jones, founder of Blue Heron Nature Preserve, invited me to make work for Placemaking. BHNP felt like a special place to me from the moment I first walked the land and I was glad to be able to celebrate it through creating art once again. I was also pleased because Placemaking aimed to celebrate women’s stories and histories as they were connected through the land that BHNP exists on. I loved the concept of connecting stories of different eras and ethnicities of women through land - which is often traditionally male centered both in ownership and inheritance. I also loved that the history of the land (as we know it) began as home to the Muscogee people that listened to, respected and lived within the natural systems in place. And then fast forward to the future through all the years of change and the opposite possibility of everything that might have been, to the present day. The Preserve, once again, through Nancy’s vision and hard work, becomes restored to its original state (more or less).
The land undergoes a re-wilding.
Pinecone Blanket
By using natural elements in the creation of the blanket and layering it with vintage Victorian underclothing, this image acknowledges pieces of female-centered Muscogee histories and customs, as well as the histories of women who made their home on the property that is now Blue Heron after the tribes no longer held the land. The pinecones and fire represent rebirth and indigenous ways of working within the wisdom of natural boundaries and systems already in place. Something that resonated with me while researching the history of the land was that Muscogee women always kept a fire going. The fire represented, drew and fed community. That historical acknowledgment of the importance, beauty and strength in community connects and carries the history to the present day, and of Nancy’s vision for the possibility of the Preserve in the middle of a busy uber developed part of town and then, amazingly, gathering the community to make it a reality. Through the act of community comes the creation of Blue Heron Nature Preserve and once again, the land and the natural systems are protected and restored.
Also, I’d like to note that this photograph pays homage and is a memorial of sorts to the tree, now a stump, that stood in that spot that the image is made in. The tree existed in the neighborhood next to mine behind the parking lot of a long abandoned school building. Its circumference was massive so it must have been pretty old and I really loved it. The tree was alive and there was a lot of space surrounding it, so no danger to houses or buildings that I could see if it were to fall. I used to visit it fairly frequently while walking one of my dogs. I was shocked and sad to discover that it was suddenly gone. This discovery felt utterly defeating and at that point, all I could do was try to think of a way to honor and memorialize it as only I know how to do. This piece, now complete, brings many things to mind when I look at it. Initially my thoughts run to the first time I ever saw the tree and especially due to its size, how remarkable I thought it was - I couldn’t stretch my arms from one side to the other. I think of the friends that helped me make the image - friends who had both visited the tree with me when it was still alive and knew how much I loved and revered it and who had also helped me through a particularly difficult time. And then walks to visit the tree with my beloved dog, whose life has also transitioned to a different plane. My love for the tree and these remembrances and connections feel like the tree has now transformed into something else, as they would normally do naturally in life once they age and fall and become a different form of life and sustenance for other systems that create life and food for even more things. It has transitioned into a shared history and now I am part of its cycle of life and loss but also change and the beauty and richness of the sustenance therein.