Nature | terriloui

Category: Nature

February 3, 2024

Flora Fauna Furniture – my foraging art of salvage

Stepping outside, in tall boots or sandals, with a curious mind, wearing gloves and sunscreen, I begin.

In the fields near our home, I came across an office chair. It was visible in the tree line off a field, apparently a dump site. Plenty of glass, cans, general household trash. I’ve been trekking there through all seasons, fascinated by the moss and seedlings determined to inhabit, reclaim, transform the chair.

Looking for ways to work, create within the natural world, I’m inspired by decades of work by Andy Goldsworthy, Patrick Dougherty’s Stickworks, Maya Lin’s installations and monuments, Christo’s wrappings, and the Spiral Jetty guy (must look up his name again. did that, Robert Smithson)

We stay at a lodge on a remote island on the Chesapeake Bay in November, first time in Nov 2017. I’ve been fascinated by the littoral beach, shifts and erosion of the coast line and the trash and tangled lines that wash in with the tide. Choosing to replicate, interpret what I encounter, I create installations, embracing the temporary, photographing the work, then allowing nature to reclaim it. Earth Art. Mother nature, she rocks.

Sometimes when the poison ivy, greenbriar and bugs aren’t fierce, I tinker with rusted metal, salvage some choice iron, for scrap or future use. I do love discovery aspect and try not to descriminate with found objects.

February 25, 2018

The Order of Things

Patterns in nature fascinate me. Fallen leaves, a bamboo grove, waves at high tide. The eye zooms in on the shape of each part and then back out on the fuller pattern.

We order things in the home, matched socks aligned in the dresser drawer. Cutlery in the kitchen. Jigsaw puzzle pieces.

We reorder things outside, too. Like a magpie or squirrel, we collect. We take from there and put it over here. We make piles. We move rocks and make stone walls. The National Park Service says “Take only photos, leave only footprints” but sometimes, we’re rule breakers.

One Fall day, I reordered the pine cones. Then, I collected the beached detritus and settled on a ship shape path.

I’ve started to work on a fantasy garden out in the woods behind our house. I’ve been cleaning up the forest floor and started a random, drunken path out of soapstone, granite and quartz cut-outs. But nature will reorder again and again, hiding the path in the fall leaves.