Human Rooting
My creative process often begins in nature.
(Photo credits: Summer Fed Photography)
Where my roots begin
Rooted in northern Appalachia, generations of my family shared knowledge through music and art. Their stories were woven from relationships with one another and the land, passed down in paintings and songs.
This is my lineage. It is who I am.
I experimented with many ways of creating before finding a home in printmaking. I have painted, whittled, embroidered, and sculpted. I have bound books, woven wall hangings, painted murals, and sketched portraits.
I can’t say for sure what it was that drew me to printmaking. What I know with certainty is that since then, I have never doubted that this is my creative home.
Where my roots are growing
I am continually evolving in my creative process as I seek to align it more closely with my truest self. The most fitting language I have found for my work is borrowed from a gifted Polish printmaker named Aga Kubish.
She writes in an article on her process, “Human Rooting is an embodied practice of establishing presence within complexity.”
For me, this means making a home for myself in each of my prints. It means surrendering my hopes, fears, and especially my uncertainty to the process.
Kubish elaborates on the impact of Human Rooting. It is “a human line moving through a larger system.”
It is me moving through the stories of my ancestors, moving through the sprits of the trees, the water, the earth itself.
Aga Kubish’s words, while complex and filled with meaning, reflect the simple ethos of my artistry and that of many others. Her article rewrites the narrative of printmaking as mere contrast between positive and negative space. It is relational, compelling, embodied.
All art is a vessel for meaning. This is what printmaking means to me.
