growing down

Down is the necessary orientation for any root and presents the best of gravity: the earth parts as water sinks in, roots reach down from a core, and the dark becomes the gathering place for opaque processes. This exhibition is a study in the poetics of commonplace, conductive material and relationships—between human and non-human, the animate and the inanimate. How do we as urban dwellers relate in revitalized ways with our own elementally rich, at-home terrain?

Water, copper, animal matter, and clay are the conductors of this show. Water is the primary element, though it’s physical absence from the show points to inherencies of what is beyond the visible. Asphalt also sets the stage as a dominant material presence that is not only the site of animal and other ecological deaths, is itself made up them—as the ground of our urban lives, of the roads that interrupt non-human passageways, and the space that keeps water out and the ground uncrusted and separate from us everywhere we go.

Accompanying clay-encrusted cards sent out in the mail gave an elemental experience of the work. The clay particles scatter in the mail and the image erodes away in transit.

Roman Susan

Chicago, 2020

https://romansusan.org/growing-down

Material list:

• river clay, water (Madison County Iowa)

• asphalt, copper cones

• animal cremains

• muslin, burlap, linen & thread

• birds’ nest mud (warbler embedded)

• clay cone casts

• beaver-chewed branch, copper leafed

• pyrite sun + pyrite sand

• asphalt-covered traffic cones

• rat traps, copper leafed

• copper-leafed hand railing

• bird-nest-mud wedge shelf

• wax, copper, plaster, potting soil & grass cones

• pyrolyzed bone char (hand-processed, Iowa wildlife)

• fiberboard ceiling panels, bird spikes

• asphalt stones (Lake Michigan)

• iowa river shale (Madison County)

• copper resin

• stones wrapped in green river clay soaked guaze

• clay covered deer tail (Oconto county, Wisconsin)

• turtle cremains

• clay-covered skunk skin

• Iowa river shale (Madison County)

• bird’s nest cavity cast in green river clay

• asphalt-surfaced fiberboard ceiling panels

• copper-leafed hole (ceiling drain hole)

• copper foil, bird spikes

• copper foil, bird spikes, animal cremains (Amish horses, Chesterhill, Ohio)

• asphalt-saturated wool felt

• charcoal fiberglass screen

• copper leafed doorknobs & locks

• pyrolyzed moose droppings bio-char, red river clay

• asphalt corner cast