I began working with salt in 2013 to develop a sense of place through a material. Salt illuminated the tides, drought, heat, wetland development, and housing along the Bay, leading me to think about the landscape through both geologic time and much shorter, human-centered processes. Ultimately, because salt is from the ocean, it connects us to the rest of the world. 

I harvest the raw salt for my large works from the ever-changing shorelines of the San Francisco Bay. The salt sits in a steel frame, corroding the steel over time. Traces of human presence are included in the works; upon close looking, one will notice tiny scraps of plastic alongside organic material. My works highlight the physical world and put us back in place as technology and urbanization estrange us from our environment by disembodying and accelerating the human experience.

Long before industrialization, the Ohlone people of the shorelines of the San Francisco Bay Area offered salt to neighboring tribes as a sign of peace and friendship. Since 1854, salt collection has been a major industry in the Bay Area. Cargill Salt harvests and processes over 500,000 tons of sea salt a year. Over thirty percent of the Bay has been filled in by landfill and real estate development. My salt works ask for the viewer’s attention to the shifting shores to recall larger processes that declare a primordial tempo and physicality.