Intrinsic Momentum

Rebecca Cross, Isabel Farnsworth, Hildur Agíersdottír Jonsson

Gallery W at American Greetings Corporation, Westlake , Ohio (2019)

Memory is an essential human experience, and is a central concern for me as an artist. I am fascinated by mining the ephemeral potential of transformed materials, where line is made by shadows and delicate forms hold the memory of solid objects.

The large installation piece, Raining Fire (2018), poses a metaphor for climate change, and perhaps the destructive potential of humans on a larger sociopolitical scale as well, and continues my exploration of the elements in the context of dramatic environmental shifts. Streams of dyed ribbons are arranged according to the Fibonacci series, the mathematical basis for the golden mean, and a common presence in natural forms. Bleach-burned black silk holds the memory of Pacific coastal rocks, tumbled over millennia.

Preservation Sequence (2018) is a series of futuristic, natural history objects, which I think of as “exprints” of imagined, extinct plant species. The drawings that are etched into their glass covers are developed from shadows first cast by the silk forms. This work considers a plausible future, where what is familiar now exists only as skins and tracings of remembered bioforms.