Mia Mulvey - "Bristlecone," "CBR26: Sequoia," "The Last Glacier: Nevada," "Prometheus," "Ring," "D21: Sequoia"

Mia Mulvey’s studio practice deals with issues of remoteness, climate, geological and ecological time. This is evidenced by the landscape through forms such as ice, ancient trees and geology. She undertakes field research to collect landscapes, map and explore materials, navigating places and locations where dramatic events have occurred, been compressed or worn away.

Mulvey is not a scientist, but follows similar paths, dipping in and out, following curiosity in the pursuit of wonder. Wonder is not a passive state, a slack-jawed stance of spectatorship, but an act of listening and learning. It is better defined as a space in-between, a path on the way to finding out.

Her process involves utilizing technology to sculpturally record and document the environment, a way to “see”. She seeks a poetic objectivity where through technological processes, “my hand is in it, but my fingerprints are not”. Such technologies include 3d scanning (photogrammetry), 3d modeling and printing paired with an emphasis on materiality, recontextualizing the digital and bringing back the importance of the land, touch and materiality.

These works look at 2 species of ancient trees; Bristlecone Pines from the east and west sides of the Great Basin, and Sequoias from the Sierra Nevada mountains. More specifically they focus on a few individual trees: Sequoia stumps CBR26 and D21, and WPN-114 better known as Prometheus.

The existence of forms and ecologies that contain information within their layers reveal temporal anchors for navigating both the present and the future. These libraries become sites for wonder as our perspectives and capacities for understanding develop.