Huldar: a Re-Wilding

When we are far from a city, we say, “we are in the middle of nowhere”, even when we are is amidst the teeming, infinite diversity of nature. Our self-focus demonstrates our poor understanding of the vastness of the natural world. I am now setting a daily reminder, so as not to forget that the bees, bugs, plants, trees, fungi, and fauna of all sorts, are at the center of their worlds; our “nowhere” is their “in the center of it all.” This last year has made me appreciate nature’s importance to all of us. As a result, the focus of my studio work changed. I did work on community engagement projects that kept artists, and myself, safely participating with the outside world during the pandemic, but my interior world was busy wrestling with the vast diversity of nature. After some false starts, I have started two series that tug at the boundary between mediated nature and a wilder space; in each piece, I aim to remember my place and embed myself in a natural world that is, naturally, indifferent to my desires. I also think of the lesson that comes from animal behaviorists who need to re- train injured wildlife, teaching them to follow their instincts, hide from predators and become part of the ecology so they are accepted back into their natural environment. I would like to remove the human smell from me. This is, admittedly, ironic since so much of my past work has been a celebration of human resilience and the continuity of human culture; I think that now I am just looking at the bigger picture. We humans make exceptional discoveries, but we are a speck on our “pale blue dot” and our achievements are predicated on a knowledge of the larger universe.