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Claire Fall Blanchette



Recent Projects ︎︎︎

Ground Truthing
Ecotone
Fragments, for the possibilities that lie ahead
Conflux
thinking with the river

Tangled Currents
1-800-SCOBY
Ruins
To Pass Through Two Doors at Once
Alien (New Wild)
Works on Paper


Older Work ︎︎︎

Place in Hand
A Perilous Decay
On a Ley Line
Rubbings
Prints
Painting


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Claire Fall Blanchette

thinking with the river


part of Ground Truthing, solo exhibition at the Francis McCray Gallery, Silver City, NM

thinking with the river are a series of three light boxes that explore vulnerable sites along the Gila River, the last wild and free-flowing river in New Mexico. The lightboxes are creating using kombucha SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) grown with water collected from the Gila River. Microscopic soil imagery, maps of proposed dam sites and reseviours, and topographical imagery are cut into the dried biofilms and layered together form a complex view of this ecological area. The SCOBY is formed from and facilitates the fermentation process, and is a barrier that protects the tea from any contaminants in the air, allowing the bacteria and yeast to flourish. In thinking with the river, the SCOBY is a symbolic protective veneer, suggesting stewardship over the river, while the cut marks reveal the networks of micro and macro geographies that are at stake.