earth flow project
I am an installation artist who curates collaborative experiences using a modality I call ‘Earth Flows,’ involving mud cracks, deep listening, and ritual in studio, public, and community settings. As director of the ecological art collective Sky Soul Studio, I host a developing platform for exploring solastalgia, our grief over climate change, deep listening, sonic ecology, human and environmental relationships with body and time, harmony and dissonance, water and earth. ‘Earth Flows’ utilize local or ‘wild’ clays in liquid form, combining earth oxides into paint for ‘Ritual Action Flow Paintings’ and casting material for ‘Cracked Earth Experiments.’ ‘Ritual Action Flow Paintings’ unite the community in improvisational ‘Earth Flows’, encouraging active listening. I am a gender non-conforming ecofeminist who teaches Contemporary Art and Creative Wellness, using sound as a healing modality.
Rituals - ‘actions undertaken with reverence and awareness’
Searching for new ways to work with liquid clay with reverence and awareness and to collaborate within the community, the improvisational ritual performance ‘FlowRate’ addressed relationships with listening, time, vibration, and transitions with a curated projection and live sound. In three scenes—primordial, geological, and contemporary—fluid clay mixed with natural earth oxides was poured from the ceiling onto a giant suspended muslin canvas and the performers below. The mostly improvised performance ritual was unexpected, surprising, and energizing. The resulting ‘Ritual Action Flow Painting’ was stabilized with natural copal resin, a technique developed recently for preserving these large-scale mud paintings as artifacts. These ‘Earth Flow’ remains symbolize the flowing timelines in nature and our lives. When dried, ‘Earth Flows’ crack. Seeing the delicate, miniature cracks that form naturally within the flows is an amazing surprise. ‘Earth Flows’ can be preserved as ‘Ritual Action Paintings’ using copal and pine resin. As viewers and participants, we find ourselves connected to the earth, air, sounds, and images, as well as each other, in our flow of collective real-time experience. Positive feedback on ‘Ritual Performances’ is that they resonate deeply and emotionally in connection with people’s life experiences.
“These immersive experiences move us profoundly, empower us, and connect us to Earth's physicality.”
Vickie Lincoln, Workshop participant
Deep Listening – outside/inside
‘How do we experience invisible environments through sound and vibration as harmony and dissonance?’
“Deep Listening," developed by Pauline Oliveros, explores the difference between the involuntary and conscious nature of hearing. The practice includes bodywork, sonic meditations, interactive performance, and listening to the sounds of daily life, nature, thoughts, imagination, and dreams. It cultivates a heightened awareness of the external and internal sonic environment and promotes experimentation, improvisation, collaboration, playfulness, and other creative skills vital to personal and community growth.”
Center for Deep Listening
I teach Performance of Self with sound healing, employing many of the modalities of Deep Listening. Deep Listening is exploratory and experimental. ' What happens when we listen with awareness to our natural environment?’ How different does one clay sound from another?’ Can we hear plants, and what are their songs? Earth Flows are based on locality, reverence for what is found in the natural environment, community, and collaboration.
Deep Listening is also integral to the ‘Ritual Performance’ events, evolving within ‘Earth Flows.’ Creating and sharing new stories enriches our life experiences.
Mud Cracks
‘How do we connect emotionally and evolve conceptually through timelines of expansion and contraction like those of earth and water which we see in mud cracks?’
‘Earth Flows’ started with finding mud cracks in the culvert near our house. Mud cracks are beautiful because of their inherent form, impermanence, transience, and imperfection. Research told us that vertical stress gradients create cracks as mud solidifies, dries, and contracts. Mud cracks are geological records of time. They are evidence of the life process of clay sediment on the earth's surface and visual records of the stress of transitions. Timelines in nature can be compared to the fluctuations of experiences and emotions in personal timelines. Clay expands and contracts with evaporation and flow; expansion feels open or joyful, and contraction feels closed or fearful. Mud cracks also question perspectives on human significance within ecosystems. Listening closely, we hear the voices of wind, sun, and rain within each mud crack and see traces of life lived minutely, beetle and bird footprints. What if we could recreate mud cracks in a gallery environment and bring wildness inside to energize artificial environments that have disconnected our deeper senses? Humans are evolving in relationship to lifeless environments, and ‘Earth Flows’ are offerings that reconnect and revive.
More research led to investigating what kind of earth or clay is under our feet. Local wild clay from nearby has very high iron oxide content, making it a beautiful red color. In 2023, in the ‘Cracked Earth/ Rising Blue’ installation at BloBack Gallery, Pueblo, we poured one ton of liquid local clay onto the gallery floor, planted seeds, and hand-painted a clay mural. We then observed the effects of time through evaporation, growth, and erosion throughout the month-long installation. Cracked Earth was a successful experiment. Witnessing the clay crack as the water evaporated became a powerful metaphor for solastalgia, and the community loved getting muddy! The installation evolved to include more community events, including eroding the large clay mural using water and sharing seedlings at the installation closing event.
Event Planning
Collaborative experimentation is at the heart of this work. There are a variety of possibilities for engaging the public, depending on timing, spatial opportunities, and conceptual development of the residency. ‘Cracked Earth Experiments’ and ‘Erosion Flows’ invite curiosity about mud and introduce concepts of beauty in impermanence. Deep Listening connects people with their environment in emotionally provoking ways. ‘Ritual Earth Flows’ and sonic experiments transform personal and architectural environments, empowering and engaging critical thinking about perceptions of the environment and the arts. A Ritual Performance using local clay would provide a deeper connection with the living earth of the region. I propose collaborative, improvisational, ritual performative events within the museum complex that would energize the space and the participants’ sense of connection with themselves and the natural environment. I am open to collaborating with local sound artists.
Events and Interactions:
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Earth Flow CLAY MURAL/ CRACKED EARTH WORKSHOP:
The public is invited to play with geological processes unfolding in the studio by hand-mixing liquid micaceous clay to pour ‘Cracked Earth Experiments’ into molds and hand paint a clay mural. Toward the end of the residency, the public is invited back to observe and document the effects of evaporation on the poured clay samples and participate in the clay mural's final erosion. Concepts of time, transition, expansion, and contraction can be observed through the cracking earth and visual imprints of flow.
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Deep Listening SOUND WORKSHOP:
‘Deep Listening’ is a community event, a sonic workshop, and an interactive sound bath that introduces active listening. Active Listening is an exploratory practice that encounters personal and collective experiences of harmony, dissonance, expansion, and contraction. Harmonic and dissonant vibrations in the interior and exterior gallery space will be playfully explored and recorded throughout the workshop, revealing unique spatial relationships. These Sonic Ecology experiments will provide the soundtrack for the subsequent ‘Earth Flow Ritual Performance’ event and engage the public’s interest as ‘Earth Flow’ progresses.
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Inviting curiosity - TIME-BASED:
The studio space will be inviting to the public. They will witness the changes in clay through water evaporation each time they return. The slowly eroding clay mural provides visual reminders of flow, like a vertical mudbank after a rainstorm. Exploring the environment by hiking locally, I will search for dead plant specimens for their evocative forms and shadows. The mud cracks that develop within forms throughout the residency become specimens and remains replicating nature. In ongoing sound experiments, I will respond to Vladem Contemporary's existing sonic ecology and use time-lapse photography to document the changes to the clay within the studio space. Continuous audio and visual editing will provide material to play and project throughout the residency space, inviting curiosity.
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Earth Flow RITUAL PERFORMANCE: gallery/ courtyard
To conclude the residency, participants in the previous workshops are invited back to perform in the ‘Earth Flow Ritual Performance.’ They can collaborate in the improvisation, expressing the voices of the clay as it pours. Liquid micaceous clay colored by various natural earth oxides will be mixed to a fluid consistency with acacia gum and poured onto the raised canvas with sonic accompaniments. The experience becomes an expansive, celebratory performance of the life of earth and water as the artist and workshop participants express the voice of the flow in sonic improvisation.
The proposed public programming aims to engage the public’s curiosity, playfulness, and environmental awareness. The workshops and performances involve deep listening, sonic ecology, water, and earth.
Goals and Intentions
‘How can I curate ‘Earth Flows’ that invite more profound and intimate experiences of environmental connection?’
I seek opportunities to share ‘Earth Flows’ with new communities and fresh audiences. This residency would provide diverse opportunities and a broader scope to share these combined creative modalities. Working with inspiring new environments always benefits and oxygenates my artistic practice. The ‘Cracked Earth Experiment’ remains, and ‘Ritual Action Flow Paintings’ and the sound and media footage we create will be added to the ‘Earth Flow Project.’
I intend to continue evolving ‘Earth Flow’ as a series of personal experiments, group and community collaborations, and an exhibit of remains and artifacts that can tour the Southwest. By creating a series of ‘Ritual Performances,’ ‘Action Earth Flow Paintings,’ and ‘Cracked Earth Experiments,’ rooted in geographic and cultural locality, we can curate authentic experiences that help transform environmental solastalgia, our grief related to climate change.
The NMMA residency would provide momentum for an ‘Earth Flow’ tour and a means to create ‘Cracked Earth Experiments,’ providing new remains and artifacts and an ‘Earth Flow Ritual Performance,’ producing a new ‘Ritual Action Painting Series.’ These can be exhibited in the upcoming exhibit, ‘Reclamation Earth Flows,’ at the Colorado State University Pueblo gallery planned for Fall 2025. Additionally, ‘Earth Flows’ work of discovering local sonic ecology and clay palettes and hosting ‘Earth Flow Ritual Performances’ could tour the Southwest, originating in Pueblo, Colorado, moving to New Mexico and potentially Utah.
‘Water and earth are characterized by vibration, expansion, contraction, evaporation, and erosion; how can we connect more deeply to sustainable, connective, creative experiences to feel more alive?’
I am curious to explore the energy of New Mexico’s earth and water in the form of local micaceous clay, which has been used for centuries in the Southwest region to create pottery. I have connected with Hand to Mountain (https://www.handtomountain.com/) for a clay source. I am excited to activate and energize event participants’ experiences at Vladem Contemporary, providing fresh, vivid, surprising, and culturally relevant experiences for the Santa Fe community. Public Art gallery architecture offers unique opportunities to explore deep listening and sonic ecology personally and in a performative context. This residency would allow me time and space to refine curating inclusive community-centered ritual performances.
‘How can we evolve more vulnerable relationships with deep listening, time, and transitions by encountering primordial, geological, and momentary time?’
I plan to investigate Deep Listening more in my practice. Working as a sound healer and artist, recent investigations into collaborative vocal harmonics have been profoundly empowering, and I want to share that experience. As ‘Earth Flows’ have been invited to create community events here in Pueblo, discovering that my creative needs and exploratory trajectory are empowering and transformative to the community captivates and inspires me to ask challenging questions.
Earth Flows
‘Earth Flows’ differ in the materials gathered from a particular physical geography and are unique in what is collected for each performance. The metaphors found in watching nature's circular seasons and realities compel us to create large and small rituals in our lives. This watching, comparing, and contrasting is uniquely human and ages-old, compelling feelings that resonate deeply within all of us.
Every time I work with a new event, I am astounded by the profound positive effects of sound and clay on participants and how exploring solastalgia transforms the community. The ‘Earth Flow’ is evolving!
"The Lakota was a true lover of Nature.. It was good for the skin to touch the earth and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth. Their tipis were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The birds that flew in the air came to rest upon the earth and it was the final abiding place of all things that lived and grew. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing, and healing...”
Chief Luther Standing Bear, Oglala Sioux
