Dymph de Wild “Corrugated Landscape” 

At the age of 8, I would build small imaginary landscapes on the path behind the garage in the back yard of my parent’s home. Dreaming of far-away craggy mountains and deep dark forests, I would create bizarre forms out of cardboard, soil, water, rocks, twigs, and other odds and ends that I would find in the garden and neighborhood.    

Last spring, during my visit to Cullowhee, North Carolina, I found myself amidst the lush, forested hills of the Appalachian Mountain Range. Its topography mimicked the landscape I had dreamt of as a young girl. In exploring the area, I stumbled across a paper mill and discovered heaps and heaps of stacked, compressed cardboard. Immediately I felt connected to that impressive, corrugated landscape. I even imagined myself wearing that forlorn paper so I could blend in and become one with that rugged terrain. For this exhibit I returned to that same cardboard wasteland and gathered sculptural detritus, so I could re-experience that familiar landscape building power. 

R. Mertens “Solivagance” 

This project was being developed in collaboration with students at WCU in Cullowhee NC.  

I worked with patterns from digital images taken of the ground around Cullowhee and Sylva and created pieced forms based off of local “Barn Quilts” and embroidery forms taken from tracings the students did of their daily movements for a week.  

Through this work I’ve been interested in how privilege effects worldview specifically in mobility. I’ve taken the movement patterns generated and converted they into visual textile patterns.  The meaning found in pattern whether it is connected to individual identity, geographic location, or cultural worldview is omnipresent and shifting. This is the significance of pattern. Pattern carries the past in its motifs, reveals the present in its cultural interstitiality, and forecasts the future through its malleability. Within pattern, artists can develop cosmologies by reimagining the old and speculating the new, all under the disguise of the decorative or ornamental.  

Additionally, I recorded sounds of the train that passes through the area and created a collaborative piece connecting the work created by Greg Stewart in Cullowhee with my own.  

This piece utilizes Cullowhee field recordings and a “To the Pines” recording of Bascom Lamar Lumsford. 

Greg Stewart “Dirt Song” 

I began this project by sweeping a number of paths along the sidewalks in the city of Sylva, North Carolina. Taking the collected debris, I stirred, and sifted it, eventually settling on a fine dirt. I then transferred the dirt back onto the sidewalk, passing it through a series of dustpan/stencils, leaving behind the lyrics to the old Appalachian folk song To The Pines, by Bascom Lamar Lumsford.