INTERSTITIAL SUSTENANCE
shelves, jars of jelly and jam, variable dimension
variable dimensions
2023-ongoing
Eccentric Grids: Mapping the Managed Forest: Interstitial Sustenance examines the historical medicinal and culinary uses of the native plant understory that connects and supports the gridded formation of cultivated longleaf pines at Austin Cary Forest, University of Florida’s teaching forest. Foraging and preserving plants in sugar using canning technologies invites the audience to consider how practices of scientific collection and extraction shape our relationship to the land. Interstitial Sustenance is both the painting formed by the shelving and the jars of jelly and jam, and my physical engagement with the managed forest. I began by walking the forest with botanist documenting and identifying the plants living amongst the pines. I, then, researched each plant’s natural history, surprised by the lack of information on the uses and edibility of each plant. Descriptions often ended with mention of an association of the plant with “native peoples”, but absent was the recognition of the specificity of indigenous knowledge. With gratitude, I carefully harvested needles, leaves and berries, walking and crawling amongst the plants, noticing patterns of how they space and entangle with one another and learning their strategies for dispersal and sustainability. Finally, I processed the plants into jam and jelly in mason jars recalling the history of preservation of specimens and speculating on the potentials and contradictions of what constitutes listening to, caring for, and making use of land.
