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Matrescence: Becoming Mother Nature is an outdoor sculptural installation and pop-up gallery thoughtfully handcrafted from primarily trash and recycled materials such as paper and cardboard, bringing awareness to environmental protection and climate resilience. The careful consideration and research of each material chosen, and their invisible effects on the natural environment as they degrade, is born from the anxiety that I bear around climate change and the world that we are leaving for future generations to inherit — as well as hope for the future and a gentler way to coexist with nature. This year-long project is a conceptual and physical manifestation of my search for answers to the questions: How do I find time and space for myself? How can I attend to the transformation within me, and the changes in the world around me? Who am I now? What have we born(e), and what do we bear? What can I learn from nature about grief, transition, and healing? (And is trash really “free”?) I invite you to draw parallels to your own lives: what have you created, are creating, are going to create? What have you borne? What has been born from your wild imagination, persistence, attention? At the same time, what is imperfect about your creations? What happens when we accept imperfection as part of the joy of being alive? I have learned so much from the act of using time, rain, and nature as mediums in my work. To allow my creations the freedom to evolve outside of my control, to let go of the illusion of permanence, is critical for exploring my own grief as well as finding comfort and solace in nature. While at first it feels like giving something up, I soon find I gain even more: freedom, perspective, new life that grows in unexpected places, and something ultimately bigger and longer-lasting than I could create myself. I think of the child I have brought into this world, and how I cannot control her future, and I wonder if all creation is the same: we can only contribute so much, and then it takes on a new life outside of us. What will our artwork, our children, our creative endeavors engender as they continue on in the world?
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