GOD OF THE BACK FORTY, MARCH 2024

Rural farming communities are some of the few remaining regions still heavily subject to the whims of the weather. The land, no matter how industrialized or nutrient-depleted, belongs only to itself, swallowing human relics whole. Work to defeat the earth is futile and will consistently fail; the modern will become dust-saturated just as the ancient did. As such, the shape of human-environment interactions in rural communities frequently centers around a stick-to-it love that makes no effort to overcome the wind, rain, or dust. In rural contexts, humans – much like the natural world they inhabit – dedicate themselves to wearing things thin, and using things until their last breath.

This work, God of the Back Forty, seeks to immortalize these interactions and glory them as something turbulent but bewitching. Using primarily second-hand items and relics from my rural experience, I have constructed a shrine to the god of the back forty acres. Smaller altars on either side of the shrine are offered to “lost objects” and “forgotten artifacts,” referencing the dichotomy of those manufactured items we lose or choose to discard (respectively). The back panel features two eagles carrying a pig, a lost creature from an industrial farm. This ecosystem of stuff hopes to highlight the toil of the natural world, the footprint of humanity, and the tragic beauty of these decaying interactions.