burnedandburied

Project Statement

I am awakened by the drive to explore the small mysteries of the natural world and bury my mind in the depths of its varied textures, subtle movements, surprising sounds, and unexplainable vastness. My encounters with the unknown stir and transform how I have processed the piece, burnedandburied. To be open to new ways of being with the world is to bear an open wound to sunlight. My process starts here, with the experience of an interaction with; organic matter, natural beings, vast bodies of water, a crevice carved by spring, a red fox sighted on a beach.

Any of these happenings can cause recognition of the senses when being in relation to other beings. The actions I take in uncovering my own small unknown moments within the natural world lead me to ponder feelings on the murkiness of grief for friend and family-kind, and for ecological-kind, together intertwined. From this can come joy for the beauty of dark decay’s contrast against light reflections on water's surface. Accompanied by the navigation of things one cannot understand, the art processes become a spark that initiates the flame to create. This fire begins to engulf every step of making and transforming an experience into a formation of elusive material.

The process of burnedandburied takes these steps:

interaction//observation//reflection → documentation//photo//movement//writing → expression//depiction//material → action//reaction//recreation → preservation//display//disassociated form//

This way of working has allowed me to create a method that is a personal survival tactic and religious-like ritual that opens my practice to becoming a useful tool in processing my own relationship to the world that surrounds us all, and transforming that into a form that holds space for the dissociation of these interactions.

Artist Bio

Ansley Gwin is a multidisciplinary artist currently living and working in Portland, Oregon who grew up in the south of Alabama and Tennessee. She is an artist, educator, and writer, who uses these talents in her art and research. Her current practice consists of the formation of organic-like subjects that commune with the natural-like world. Extensive processes transform the artist’s personal interactions of being with the unknown into a formation of elusive matter.