Hannah Bates—Among
From the artist: The exhibition Among presented at Waterloo Arts exposes the wildness of a post-industrial landscape through material exploration. The work began by wandering along the shores of Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie, searching for resonate objects. Both of these sites are a collision between the natural world and human production; Lake Erie, with algae blooms caused by farmland runoff, and the Cuyahoga, with its meandering history of industrial pollution. The forms in the exhibition originate near these rustbelt waterways: gnarly driftwood, knotted burls, weathered styrofoam, polypore mushrooms, spalted wood, and decomposing plant matter. Transfigured into aluminum, plaster, and cement, these objects express the tangibility of time. For example, the osage-orange tree produces fruit that was once a food source for Pleistocene megafauna. The anachronistic osage-orange is a material representation of a pre-human world. The visual taxonomy of found and fabricated objects presented in Among contemplates deep time as a way to re-enchant a damaged environment. Through a poetic and intuitive science, the process of collecting, molding, and casting nurtures a sense of belonging between salt mines and steel mills.