FOREST FLOOR

 I am fascinated by the forest floor. Walking in the woods, photographing the tiny treasures I find, and journaling are essential parts of my artistic process. I pay attention to, and try to translate for others, the often unseen things that live their lives parallel to ours. The biodiversity of our forests, and the forests themselves, are under continuous assault by climate change and habitat loss, and I believe that we will not save what we do not love; we cannot love what we do not know exists; and we cannot know what exists if we don’t take the time to closely look.

Forest Floor emerged over more than a year. I started the project by eco-dying an upcycled linen tablecloth using leaves from my forest floor. I machine-quilted the dyed linen with cotton batting, using free-motion stitching to intuitively follow the patterns that were formed by eco-dying.

I am always looking for ways to depict and incorporate my woods-walk discoveries in my artwork. For this piece, I challenged myself to add one small forest floor element to the quilted linen each day: a patch of hand-embroidered moss with beaded sporophytes, a group of sculpted paper mushrooms, a quilted leaf made from eco-dyed used coffee filters, lichen made by stitching and melting green netting left over from wrapping presents, or a piece of fallen log made from recycled paper pulp in a hand-made mold. The piece progressed slowly, intuitively, and features some of my favorite things I find on my walks in the forest: ferns, acorns, lichen and mosses, and mushrooms of all kinds.

The piece is finished with a rigid bottom, and measures 24" diameter.  It is intended to be displayed horizontally, mimicking a small part of the forest floor like it might be encountered if the viewer were in the woods. My hope is that viewers will spend time poring over it, looking for tiny surprises and treasures, just the way I walk in my own woods.