GROWTH PATTERN SPECULATION

TWISTED RUN, VANCLEAVE, MISSISSIPPI

2024

Just before my second semester at Tulane began, I was invited as an MFA resident to the remote Twisted Run Retreat residency in the forests of Vancleave, Mississippi. During the week I spent there in solitude, I used my time to photographically document the geometries of growth patterns I witnessed on the property (see Figure 8 & 9). This included photographing the canopy of trees, vines sprawling across the ground, the gills of mushroom caps, and the rings of lichen colonies. I intended to find as many human-scale patterns as possible. These photos were then used as base layers for overlaid digital illustrations. The drawings are meant to highlight (literally, in yellow) the geometries I captured in each image. This preliminary exercise was meant to train my eye to look for geometrical repetition in nature, in preparation for my next project, Digital Specimens.