About Cape Cod Project

Tracing Nature is a drawing and print project that visually translates the physical and visceral experience of hiking remote landscapes.

Tracing Nature originates in the solitude of nature, isolated from urban areas, in four diverse geographical locations. My primary working method, creating drawings on paper with water media, will reflect my observations of nature and will record, via mark-making, my direct physical experiences of wilderness travel in remote landscapes. My drawings will be documents of the changing weather, the sounds of nature, the isolation, and the singular experience of observing time through changes in environment. The first of these locations is a winter residency at the Cape Cod National Seashore’s C-Scape Beach Shack where I will live December 2007 through January 2008 in a primitive shack on the Atlantic ocean without electricity, running water, cell or wireless service.

The work will flow from my interaction with the land. The drawings will become a visual mapping specific to each region: abstract, intuitive time lines that mark a spatial journey of memory and change. The topographical character of my work, both imagined and reflecting nature evolves from my subconscious as I transform two-dimensional space on the paper with the memory of movement through time and space. My body holds the legacy of physical experience that I then decode in my artwork to explore the notion of transience, chance, and difference.

Grounded in traditions of performance walking, such as Marina Abramovic and Ulay’s “Great Wall Walk” or Richard Long’s walking landscape work, my artwork will be shaped by the space that I pass through. Like Abramovic and Ulay, I test my boundaries in the face of danger, pain, pleasure, and reward by traveling isolated landscapes and living outdoors. These events become private collections of physical memory that I will translate into tangible objects. My artwork is further shaped by the ecological philosophy of deep ecology. Founded by poet Gary Snyder, deep ecology celebrates the intrinsic value and sacredness of the natural world and gives the preservation of nature prime importance.

My project takes an experimental approach to studio production by creating a transitory wilderness studio that invites viewers to observe my daily living and art production through a weblog at <adventureartist.wordpress.com> where I will post writings and digital photographs. The blog is possible through a satellite terminal provided by my corporate sponsor Galaxy 1 communications in the Netherlands.

The completed two year project will result in a portfolio of drawings, photographs both digital and large format and an editioned portfolio of etchings that will be exhibited internationally.

©Hilary Lorenz 2007