Abstract

Fallow Ground refers to the agricultural practice of intentionally leaving a field unseeded for a year or more in order to restore fertility and interrupt cycles of depletion. Although fallowing is a beneficial and necessary practice, the term has also come to signify waste or a lack of productivity. This double meaning is central to the work, reflecting a central contradiction: that withdrawal can be as vital as effort, and that rest, like labor, can function as a deliberate and sustaining act. The question I explore in this work is how to organize, understand, and live with these contradictions. Through large, waxed drawings of native and invasive plant species, sculptural work gloves constructed from transferred family photographs depicting agricultural labor, and installation elements incorporating gathered branches and video projections of cutting and pruning, the work examines the relationship between land, labor, and time. Rather than resolving contradiction, Fallow Ground considers how ritualized acts of making--marked by repetition, restraint, and sustained attention--give material form to the tensions between care and harm, growth and loss, faith and uncertainty.

Degree

MFA

College and Department

Fine Arts and Communications; Art

Rights

https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/