GEONTOLOGICAL SURVEY OF FOSSIL GRAINS | Granary Arts, Ephraim, Utah
May 22 – September 20, 2024 | Closing Reception: Sept. 13
Geontological Survey of Fossil Grains is an aggregate of three regional assemblies: archival materials, collective histories, and local geologies. The installation includes two maps that navigate the logic of worldmaking through Ochre practice, a bulletin of research that informs the works, and seven paper banners soaked in Ochre pigment each containing a “fossil of grain”.
The exhibit is the next installation of the Field Studio Geontological Survey (FSGS), a design research collective thinking with Ochre through field, community, and studio operations. The installation is a culmination of FSGS field work in Ephraim surveying local Ochres, and archival research in the Utah Pioneer Costume Research Project. This work explores the history of rural women’s mutual aid organizations and maps them through potentials in the space between stone and grain.
If the fossil is the rock’s memory of the shape of the body that once was; the photograph is the archive’s memory of the shape of the body that once was. Traces of color–the golden dust of the quarry to the pale glow of grain–map alternative routes in past/futures.