THIS WAS ONCE A FOREST, THIS WAS ONCE A SEA (forthcoming, 2025)

Audio-visual installation (4 channel audio, 3 channel video)

This Was Once a Forest, This Was Once a Sea is a reminder of the long history of Ohio’s land, from old growth forests in the nineteenth century to an ancient, 250 million year-old ocean. The video shares close-up images of a fossilized ocean bed and the base of a centuries-old oak tree (from Caesar Creek State Park and Davey Woods State Nature Preserve, both located in Ohio). The audio features field recordings of wind and the internal sounds of trees, whose white noise, creaking, and swaying are at once ghostly and uncannily aquatic. Together, these fossils and trees are a natural archive, operating on a different time scale from our human experiences. Up-close, they offer a new way of understanding the places where we live, and quietly prompt us to act as stewards to the land.

This Was Once a Forest will be part of the “Ohio Now” group exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati, opening May 2025. It will then travel on to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Cleveland in 2026.