This series began when I moved to live on the Marcellus Shale and found myself in the midst of extreme controversy over hydraulic fracturing. Thinking about the shale as a living and changing layer of the earth under my feet inspired these drawings. Almost as ancient as the ocean and just as rich in history.
I love this quote from Robert Macfarlane: “To understand even a little about geology gives you special spectacles through which to see a landscape. They allow you to see back in time to worlds where rocks liquefy and seas petrify, where granite slops about like porridge, basalt bubbles like stew, and layers of limestone are folded as easily as blankets. Through the spectacles of geology, terra firma becomes terra mobilis, and we are forced to reconsider our beliefs of what is solid and what is not. Although we attribute to stone a great power to hold back time, to refuse its claims (cairns, stone tablets, monuments, statuary), this is true only in relation to our own mutability. Looked at in the context of the bigger geological picture, rock is as vulnerable to change as any other substance.” From: Robert Macfarlane’s Mountains of the Mind
