Ghost Trees Artist Statement
The Ghost Trees project is a 15 year exploration of loss, longing, and the search for home. The project investigates the liminal space between what was, what is and what will be in an ever-changing world.
Ghost Trees is an investigation of the bald cypress trees in the Cape Fear River basin in coastal North Carolina. The trees are dying due to saltwater intrusion from climate change. There are countless ghost forests along the U.S. coast of the Atlantic Ocean, from Maine to Florida.
The Ghost Trees project is an exploration of grief and awe, loss and beauty. The photographs hold both global grief for climate loss and personal sorrow—my mother’s late-life relapse, her near suicide, and her death from cancer years later. The project evolved into a journey of finding meaning and new ways of seeing while facing a degenerative eye disorder. It became a portal, inviting me to embrace what is and discover new ways of seeing.
Loss and beauty have the power to transform us. I hope the viewer feels both the sorrow and beauty of these trees—and is moved to protect nature.
My photography is a contemporary inquiry into psychological space, place, narrative, memory, loss, longing and healing. I am curious about the ways in which outer landscapes are equivalents of the inner landscape of emotional states.
This project is made possible, in part, by a 2016-2017 Regional Artist Project Grant award from The Arts Council of Wilmington.
Ghost Trees exhibit history:
Expo 216 | 216 N. Front St. | Wilmington, NC 28401 2017
Art in Bloom Gallery | Wilmington, NC. 2019
Awards
First Place Award in Art of the Image ’19. Art in Bloom Gallery and theArtWorks. Juror Beth Handler Riebe. “The Answer Lies Within” from the Ghost Trees project.
Regional Artist Project Grant. 2016-2017. The Arts Council of Wilmington.
Book Cover
“Fading Echoes” image from the Ghost Trees series is featured on the cover of Readiness by Mark Cox. Readiness is a beautiful book of meditative prose poems on the joys and struggles of being human.
