“Temporary Terrains” at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens (2019)

“Temporary Terrain” is an ephemeral clay installation and social practice project.

Through a series of collaborative workshops for students and the general public, members of the community could participate in my project by modeling the clay into the molds of plants and adding them to a large post-and-lintel structure over the entrance doors to the Garden.

The artwork was assembled during the Ramble Garden festival which took place over the course of a weekend in November, where the structure was totally wrapped in the unfired clay textures of leaves, roots, bark and flowers. It was subsequently destroyed and the clay was recycled with water one week later, to be used for another installation.

Through these ephemeral compositions, it is my hope to cultivate in others a love of clay, to inspire environmental stewardship and to serve as a reminder of the fragile and finite existence of our society's current relationship to it’s ecosystems.