“All living relationships are in process of change, of expansion, and must perpetually be building themselves new forms.”                  – Anne Morrow

Lindbergh Lost & Found is a collection exploring the earth’s resilience and human carelessness using textile, watercolour, birch, and rusted metal. The artwork represents tensions between contrasts: decay/growth,hard/soft, domestic/industrial, handmade/manufactured, even rural/urban. The circles, spirals, and pairings in Lost & Found point to our personal journeys and how we evolve, just as nature does. 

Nature’s inexorable magic contrasts starkly with the speed at which human interference destroys it. All beings grow, and in the process of changing, often discard outgrown layers, selves, or feelings. Our perception of what is lost or found is defined by noticing. Getting lost in natural spaces and in art may help us find insights we may not have foreseen.

My walks and runs through natural and urban environments have become integral to my art practice. The debris I find on the ground is not only inspiring but also forms material I use in my work. My constel/lichen birch pieces are about transformation and the inherently hopeful power of seeking new forms. Each piece of bark discarded by its tree takes on new life and grows textile shapes through my needles. A new visual story is coaxed out, connecting human experience with what grows in the forest and suggesting lichen, moss, maps and constellations. Growth can be painful or ugly, but often it results in beauty. Invoking all the implications inherent in the shedding of old skins and natural growth, these pieces are like maps to a new and unexplored place.

The constel/lichen pieces are cousins to my Rust Proof series, in which natural fibres and stitches merge with manufactured debris. They are studies of interrelatedness and contrast, full of unlikely affinities, interrogations of our current environmental crisis. My use of found metal is a way to point to the damage we are doing to our planet and to create something unforeseen and cathartic. 

Hand stitching grows on the metal just as memories and experiences accumulate within us and create layers of meaning in our lives. Sometimes the metal suggests natural shapes, providing clues to how the pieces will take form. I emulate the natural growth around us, gesturing to the kinship between humanity and nature and creating stark reminders that industry marks our world indelibly. The discarded objects in my artwork hint that we might be better guardians of the beauty around us, especially as we are inextricably interwoven within it.

The geography of the Bancroft area is deeply embedded in Lost & Found. Most of my birch is found on walks in the woods north of Bancroft, as are many of the rusted elements (for instance, the surprising spiral bed springs which emerged after the ice melted off Baptiste Lake one year). Lost & Found embodies the precious discoveries we experience on our personal journeys and the alchemy of creating beauty out of decay. Our human feelings of loss or being lost are just a matter of perspective.