A Pond Becomes a Forest
2019 – Ongoing
During my time at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), I became fascinated with classification systems, categorization, and the different ways we acquire knowledge of the Earth. I was also drawn to genesis and formation processes—how something forms, how it emerges. It began with movement around a terrestrial globe—circling it, questioning it—as an interrogation of geometry, of an object that represents the Earth yet is not itself a living system.
From there, I started thinking about the construction and genesis of a pond as a way of learning from nature: what it means to create the conditions for water to be retained, for life to emerge. The pond became a reconfiguration of the self: a reworking of a knowledge system, a mental model. In the process, an in-between space began to take form. It started with a chance encounter, within the tension between human-dominated landscapes and other ways of being, moving, and inhabiting the world.
A Pond Becomes a Forest is still unfolding, and I continue to develop, to photograph, to write, to find collisions, to listen to coincidences, and to deepen my knowledge. Last year, I took a class to better understand how to build an Earthen pond. I realized that I cannot truly write about a pond sincerely until I construct one. That is the process of transformation that I am seeking. And this summer, I witnessed the genesis of a pond for the first time—groundwater slowly feeding it as it came into being. It felt as though a threshold had been crossed again, inviting me back into a dialogue with the work. In itself, it was another chance encounter; I did not know I would witness that moment that day.
This project is currently on view at ShowUp Gallery in Boston as part of the group exhibition Reciprocal Ecology, curated by Cassandra Klos, on view through April 26, 2026. Earlier versions of the work were presented in the group exhibition Interior Atlas: Ways of Research, curated by Anne West and Holly Gaboriault at the Sol Koffler Graduate Student Gallery at RISD in 2023, as well as in the 2021 Graduate Thesis Exhibition at RISD.
