Ghost Forest
I have become obsessed with the ghost forests that line the coast of North Carolina, which I started to document with my camera in 2020. Along the Albemarle Sound, these dead and dying tree groupings expand dramatically while also decaying through storms, rain, and sunshine. Dedicated to this fragile ecosystem—simultaneously beautiful and melancholy—this series builds on my own photography, using fabrics I painted and printed. A few pieces in this series are either abstract or translating these photographic images into threadwork.
Ghost Forest #3
20 x 30 x 0.75 inches
Centering on the entwined tree trunks that feature in Ghost Forest #1, this multimedia piece uses threadwork in front of overlapping scraps, aluminum foil, and paper to draw attention to the precarity of these trees’ life cycle. Already fragile when the photograph was taken, they disintegrated within the following year.
Ghost Forest #2
11 x 14 inches
The abstract shapes and the stitching of this second piece evoke the trees as they rise from the water’s edge; bonded already to the land and sea they will dissolve over time.
Ghost Forest #1
18 x 18 inches
I based this quilt on a photograph I took in the summer of 2022 at the edge of the Nags Head Woods Preserve. These three trees have since been uprooted by a massive storm; only the roots are visible now. The fabric is painted and mono-printed with pigments dissolved in soy milk. I transferred the manipulated photograph, layered the bottom of the quilt with cheesecloth, stitched the quilt sandwich, and embellished the piece.