2023 Nancy Cook Fellowship Exhibition

Artist Laura DeAngelis’ cross disciplinary project took her across the Western landscapes of her upbringing, across paths where she rode her bike as a child or hiked with family. Combining photographs with a wall drawing created using the soils from those childhood sites, DeAngelis invites viewers into a tactile, multi-sensory experience of land, of the soils she’s traversed. The mandala-like wall drawing is unexpectedly sensuous and evocative of place. Seeking the familiar textures and qualities of sandstone, DeAngelis instead found a breadth of soil types which she dug samples of by hand. Those soil samples, once scraped from the wall, will be returned to the earth. 

Missing here are the lands of her maternal family, soils from Samoa and Tokelau in the Pacifica region. The artist’s exploration of the Western states, of the soils of her childhood homes, brought forward an acute awareness of the landscapes she hasn’t yet explored but carries with her nonetheless. Samoa and Tokelau remain a place of imagination and discovery still on the artist’s horizon. 

Text and photograph by curator Deirdre Visser