In process - Sense Making in a Creative Practice

image by Alex Rose

 

Sense making in a creative practice, July 2023 to May 2024

University of Maine softwood cellulose nanofiber, Beam Paints watercolor, copper, hemp cordage, twine, and string.


These are all thoughts, and thoughts on thoughts. They interrupt, mingle and weigh on each other. For a year Augusta Sparks Farnum has studied, surveyed, observed and engaged in sense making in a creative practice. Many artists do this, this thinking by making. The idea of putting words to what is enough, is the paradox.

In an act of awareness and engagement this work catches many, although not all, of the ruminations from the year. Tender intimacies in the studio transmuted the cycles of the forest, climate change and personal erosion into a library of sculptures for public assemblages, altars and installations. Like a conversation had over a long time, thoughts are embellished, nuanced, altered, given significance and are embedded into the structure of others. 

There is a barrier of convenience, reliance on indeterminacy, and the repeated application of the edge effect, where multiple ecologies evolve dynamically. The work is made with materials that are from the earth, not synthetic and yet wholly unnatural. Every material used has been previously harvested, and manipulated, acknowledging the co-evolution of technologies and life worlds by inclusion. Material response, human collaboration, a studio practice foundation, photographic accumulation, and a trust in material becoming what it wants to be, shapes the sense making. While the work is abstract, it is mapped and categorized according to what was being negotiated and researched.