Jessica Earle – In The End We All Will Be Trees 2017 MFA Thesis Exhibition Electronic Integrated Arts

In The End We All Will Be Trees

MFA Thesis Exhibition Electronic Integrated Arts
April 29th – May 2nd, 2017

The western landscape has sparked the imagination of writers, musicians, and artists since the first Europeans left their footprints in the bush. Explorers, cowboys, and prospectors have left their mark on the land and in the imaginations of those of that have followed them. The vastness, danger, and resources are even today something to be tamed, tested, and used. Young men cut their teeth on the wilderness, and grizzled, leathery, graybeards continue to prove their worth through domination over peaks, and beasts alike. These adventurers lust after the sublime: that fear and awesomeness that makes you quake in your boots, and knocks the breath out of your lungs with force of an avalanche.

What if we were seduced into something more intimate than such needs for dominance over the land? John Muir recognized rocks, sequoias, and streams as kin; and Henry David Thoreau lost himself in the woods in order to find himself. Instead of lusting for an enormous sublime what if we fell into the minutia by sinking into the dirt, sending roots into the darkness, and absorbing the past buried beneath it while watching the patterns of light change on the ferns or moss.