Reclamation

2025

Medium: Mixed media textile sculpture

Dimensions: 17″ × 25″ x 4”

Price / Status: $1025USD — Available for sale

Exhibition History: The Source – Dunedin Fine Art Center, 2025 – Received Merit Award

Themes: Nature reclaiming human-made structures; resilience; ecological critique

Reclamation, 2025 – mixed-media textile sculpture of reclaimed fabric, rusted metal, and hand-dyed threads; an ecological meditation on nature’s enduring power.

Artist Statement

Reclamation is a textile sculpture created entirely from reclaimed and altered materials — fabric, canvas, rusted metal, cord, and hand-dyed threads. The piece interrogates the forms of tree roots and vines as they overtake abandoned human-made structures, transforming sites of neglect into living monuments of resilience.

This work critiques overconsumption, exploitation, and the impermanence of human industry. By using reclaimed fabric, eco-dyes, and found objects, Reclamation emphasizes that nothing is ever truly waste — the detritus of consumption becomes soil for renewal. Each stitched, coiled, and rust-stained thread reflects the endurance of the natural world, reclaiming space even in the wake of our destruction.

The rust treatment embedded throughout the work ensures its eventual deterioration, mirroring the temporary nature of the systems it critiques. Like our bodies, our crumbling infrastructures, and the ecosystems we exploit, this piece embodies the fundamental truth that all phenomena are impermanent. The collector enters into a relationship not with a permanent object, but with an investigation of decay, renewal, and the futility of preservation within extractive systems.

Positioned within the Ecosystems series, Reclamation stands as both ecological critique and temporal meditation. Nature is framed not as fragile but as enduring — steadily weaving itself back through what humanity discards, while the work itself participates in the cycles of dissolution it depicts.