This summer’s collection is a way for us to investigate the possibilities of blurring the lines between human and animal, of the everyday and the truly unttame.

There is pleasure in this blurring - the kind of pleasure we New Englanders know most viscerally in our brief and bright summer.  But there is also some fear.  What is wild can not be counted on not to harm us.  For the first white settlers in New England, the creatures and dark of the forest (and the people who moved through them) were an existential terror.  They turned their houses away, and burned the trees.

So we ask: can pleasure be a way towards deepening our connections with the world? What gets lost when we separate ourselves from “wild”? How do you live alongside the wild? How do you safely love it back, and be human?

colors: white, green, blue

materials: wood, shell, clay, fruit, herb

setting: rocky New England coastline, where the forest meets the sea -

questions: can pleasure be a way towards deepening your connection with the world? what gets lost when we separate ourselves from “wild”? where is wild? how do we protect what’s wild? how can you claim your wildness?  what does wild “look” like and who is it for? patriotism and wilderness ; is the non-human threatening, or comforting?  How do you live alongside the wild?  Is the landscape there to defeat you, or to love you?  How do you safely love it back, and be human?  ; if you are wild then must you be caged? when or where are you caged?  are we beasts?

texts: William Cronon – Wilderness, Women Who Run With Wolves, Braiding Sweetgrass, Nature is All Around Us; H is for Hawk