“Air Root” Series

Humanity has a need to feel grounded: spiritually and physically with nature, and with one another. This idea of grounding is an important topic in many spiritual traditions, especially those involving mediation and meditative prayer. This need to ground ourselves raises questions of connectivity. What do we attach ourselves to? How are we grounded to maintain inner balance? Are we simply grasping at empty air, like an air root, searching for the very thing that will sustain us? How can contradiction co-exist in one being, like one with both grounded roots and roots grasping at thin air?

Metaphorically, these drawings explore the contradictions of solidarity and connectivity. They consider the importance of what it means to be grounded, like air roots that reach out to pull nutrients and moisture from the air. This air root and epiphyte series addresses personal situations in life where the struggle to find balance is encountered. Here, each drawing represents a particular “event” in this process. Through the abstraction of plant imagery, I invite the viewer to find beauty in the process of connecting and grounding oneself, one that is often full of mess and contradiction, and without resolution, be able to rest in that instability.