In Leaf Memory  I give figure to infinitude, seeing landscape as a space both empty and filled, enwrapping both absence and presence, loss as much as remains. When in a landscape, spirit and mind seem to expand, evoking an eerily parallel latitude that stretches beyond horizon and space, unmapped, its paths and contours written solely for escape. At the same time, and contradictorily, landscape induces the potential for cemented belonging, a here and now, a place where I may live.  

As such, landscape (seeing-over-land) and the land (grounded place) pose dualities that compel my searches in several ways. Ultimately, Leaf Memory becomes the-other-of-self (not another self).  

Cloud, stone, and leaf dwell in my landscapes. I use cleared prickly pear cactus leaves (Opuntia) to form and clothe these inhabitants. Opuntia leaves store tender, moist green flesh between delicate veins to fill, feed, and nourish both itself and us. But when stripped of flesh their vascular bundles become skeletal, the leaves' interior laid bare as gauntly vulnerable.  I redraw their veins in endless stitching, interlacing mark and unmark to stage the volatile fragility of cloud, and the stayed satiety of stone. Just so I trail to heal the seams and fissures of rocks, marking their existence as the remains of gain and loss.

The repetitive folding of the leaf skeletons, their unfolding in and as landscape, echo and trace the migratory movements that this earth must yet know, whether their paths are written by drift and dream, or by need and survival.