a Diary of Straw and Seawater

2025

Installation for the Open Studios at PAiR Residency, Latvia

Grass mural and installation (materials: lichen, pebbles, wood, thread, moss, grass, shells, amber, sand, wild clay)

A visual diary containing stories about my encounters with the coastal landscape of Pāvilosta, where I did a month-long artist residency.

The installation showed an in-between moment of my creative process where trials, failures and findings were equally valued and allowed to exist simultaneously, presented as a landscape of curated, sometimes slightly modified, found material from the surrounding area of dunes.
I was wondering how to work with these existing forms. Whether there is a collaboration possible between the inherent structures of natural shapes and the modification by a human hand, what would for instance be the natural curve of a blade of grass?
All the displayed material visualized this dialog while exploring themes such as temporality, scale and our interaction with non-human forces, questioning: how can I illuminate what is already there and showcase nature's handwriting while at the same time expressing my own?

I am assembling a landscape, storing its salty air on the surface of my skin and hiding grains of sand in my shoes. I write my diary with coastlines, while the movements of swaying lyme grass whisper the words to me. I capture the sceneries through the light-sensing cells of the retina and pin them to my memory with pine needles. I gather the soil with my fingertips, bundle leaves and make piles of washed-up pebbles. How can you record a landscape with your whole body? Can you assemble something that is already a whole? How do you become part of the collection yourself?

At the end of the residency, all materials were returned to the sea in ceramic vessels made from clay I harvested on the beach.