photo by Sara Overbeck

Cosmic Compost: Beauty in the Breakdown, and Magic in the Mess

FEB - MARCH 2025
The Launchpad
Carbondale, CO

“Cosmic Compost” was a solo exhibition and an experiment in honoring and acknowledging decomposition as an essential process in the continuation of life. Using both organic and manufactured materials that were gathered, scavenged, and arranged in new contexts, the artworks explored the ephemerality of the material world and the fabric into which it is woven — built to change, and embedded with potential.

Watch the Artist Talk from the show to learn more.

photo by Sara Overbeck

photo by Sam Sheppard

ARTIST STATEMENT

The artworks in this show are made from discarded fragments I’ve found while wandering down alleyways, or untangled from rocks & branches in the river, or spotted while driving down the highway. I stopped to gather them up because they were beautiful or compelling to me in some way, and have a story to tell about the world they come from — a world that is steadily, relentlessly transforming itself. Growing and unfurling and adapting until it’s time again to break down in order to be remade. 

For me making art from the strange scraps I find is my way of making peace with the human phenomenon of “trash”, the limits of what I can and can’t control, and the persistence of loss. These weird creations are my offerings of surrender to the wild forces of change that seem to shape our reality.

Decay and decomposition tend to get a bad rap, but I think they are the unsung heroes of the Life/Death cycle. To me there is a magic in the way sunlight bleaches an orange sleeping bag someone left in the woods, the way micro-organisms chew tunnels into bones, and water softens the edges of sharp glass. Even shredded plastic is mesmerizing when caught in the branches of a tree, becoming a messenger for the wind.

Death (and the Earth) receive us all, no questions asked. Except perhaps, what will you become next? What will the weavers of the underworld create with the unraveling fibers of a favorite sweater, the loosened pages of notebooks, the remains of your muscles and eyelashes and tongue? It seems that all is fair game in the cosmic compost pile. And any of us can be the tenders if we so choose, taking our turn to shovel, flip, and nurture a rich and vibrant soil for the next iteration of this fiercely generous world.