In March 2020 I was working on site at Composed to Decompose, curated by Linda Weintraub and Michael Asbill at Unison Arts Center in New Paltz, New York . It was a year long project with 12 artists responding to the site, one each month.

I created ephemeral circles of straw, detritus and other materials found onsite. I outlined my body in deer bone and other natural objects after Anna Mendietta's Silhouettas. I lined a fire pit created by one of the previous artists with cotton batting from an old futon, encircled it with bones, and burrowed in, returning myself to the earth as if a burial ground.

I gathered a basket, a skull, an old mouton coat. I draped myself in deer bones, stood barefoot on the earth. It was the beginning of March. Before we knew we’d be sheltering in place for months. Before we’d begun wearing masks to protect ourselves and others. I stared into the camera, unaware of what was to come. Masked, and naked. 

Cultures across time have celebrated their connection to the earth, to the natural rhythms of the seasons, to worlds other than human and to the many mysteries of the universe. All cultures and times, it seems, except ours. Modern, western culture disconnects from nature in every possible way.

I was thinking about how humans have embodied the natural world of which we are so inextricably a part and apart. I was responding to the site and to previous artists' work. I entered this engagement more as an exploration than an exhibition. The work evolved each time I visited, very organically and intuitively.