Before, Beneath, Beyond

Before, Beneath, Beyond is an installation created during my three-week residency at Domaine de Boisbuchet in Lessac, France. It is a meditation on earth, impermanence, and collaboration. The piece emerged through an immersive process of sourcing, processing, and experimenting with wild clay from the nearby lake, which I integrated with store-bought clay and found materials.

The clay became more than a medium, it became a collaborator. We explored its many forms: slip, sludge, solid, fragile, painted, printed. Each transformation held metaphor: the fragility of the body, the fluidity of time, the resilience of nature.

The installation featured three suspended panels made from bamboo and clay prints, evoking Japanese scrolls and Tibetan thankas. Beneath them, two low benches displayed small sculptural forms, abstract yet familiar, resembling ancient tools, rocks, vessels. On either side, companion installations showed the clay in its various states: dry, wet, and in flux. A mud painting and a clay bowl shaped inside a hollow tree trunk invited viewers into a tactile, embodied experience.

Sound was an integral element: the chirping of birds, the cackling of crickets, the slosh of mud, natural rhythms echoed through the space. Everything about the piece spoke to impermanence. Nothing was preserved, nothing archival. The clay cracked, crumbled, and fell. And that was the point.

This work was a co-creation with Diego Lara, a fellow resident. Though we come from different generations and geographies (Spain and the U.S., 31 and 62), we found shared language through making. Our collaboration was intuitive and experimental, a dance between earth, human, and form.