Dirt Drawings

A few weeks ago a frenzied spiral of thinking too many thoughts culminated in making the impulsive decision to spend an hour digging around our property for dirt. Indulging in nostalgia was cathartic and felt like a momentary escape from the chaos of a thinly spread mind.

Serendipitously I recently stumbled upon Margaret Boozer’s work, much of which involves dirt - a material otherwise often overlooked – as her main material source.  What strikes me foremost about Margaret Boozer is the feeling of authenticity embedded within each of her pieces; through sourcing unprocessed clays and soils as her direct medium of use, there is a connectedness to the earth and landscape in her work. Boozer experiments with both raw and fired earth in a variety of ways, one of which involves creating ‘dirt drawings’ (aptly named) on gallery floors and walls, using materials often sourced from the location of her installation. This element of locality urges the viewer to perhaps see their directly surrounding landscape through a different lens – to truly look at the dirt they walk upon daily, yet seldom pause to notice. What I find fascinating about these dirt drawings is their temporary status; each piece exists only for the period of the installation and then subsequently swept away and returned to the earth.

With all of her dirt drawings the unfired soil changes and cracks in unexpected ways throughout the period of the installation. I find this degree of temporality especially intriguing, as the sculptures are not merely a static representation of natural forms, rather, they depict the ever changing relationship between time and earth, with new layers of textures and colors continuously emerging beneath the surface.