You should lie down now and remember the forest, for it is disappearing-- no, the truth is it is gone now and so what details you can bring back might have a kind of life.

- from The Forest by Susan Stewart

Lost Lake is a meditation upon fragility and beauty, discovery and disorientation. The series originated during the pandemic when walking the forest became a refuge from the surreal quality that everyday life had assumed. Originally Quinnipiac land, the forest has a complicated history, where the geologic and human have together shaped its character. Glacial erratics, stone walls, fallen trees, and extracted quarry stones lie throughout the woods. Bogs, creeks, vernal ponds, saltmarshes, ledge, plants, and animals share woodlands, while the rail lines, cell towers, highways and subdivisions hug the forest boundary. The sound of planes overhead intermingle with those of the birds. This work has been influenced by time spent with my young grandchild who is blind. Glimpses of light, and shades of color slip in and out of her perceptual field, but it is the tactile and aural that inform and shape her understanding of the world. In an effort to represent an imaginative space that speaks to our peculiar moment, I utilized photographic glitch, abstraction, and applied color fields. The abstracted patterns are suggestive of scientific recordings (weather, earthquakes, and hearts), or the textures of tree bark and other patterns of nature. They might also mirror the movement of fingers, touching and exploring (she sees with her hands). I have also included re-contextualized archive photographs of hands reading braille, writing braille, or otherwise learning through tactile knowledge. These are from various collections, such as the vast holdings at the Perkins School for the Blind. Additional photographs of hands and earth are included. A compilation of sound recordings will be woven together to accompany the images. I’ve recorded sounds from both the natural world (birds chirping, water flowing), and the human-created (a train going by), and these will be paired with the voice of my grandchild as she explores the forest (“I feel the moss”).