Olivia Chebac (she/her)

My artwork and practice are driven by a desire to return, and in that return to heal. To return to my flesh, to my breath, to this earth, to this moment. I wonder if the earth disassociates just like I do. I wonder if in my turning and returning to her, she returns to herself.

My practice is deliberately slow and present, wishing to disconnect from a culture that values productivity over wellbeing. I use natural materials as much as possible in my work, so that I can be with my work for its entire life-cycle: from the transformation from a plant or soil into an artwork, and back to the earth in its decay. I engage with natural materials as investigations of both their sensual and formal properties. As an herbalist, I am interested in both scientific and spiritual studies of plant consciousness. I often return my work to the places where its materials are from, often after bringing them into my studio to create artwork. These returnings are performative and ritualistic, and are often without human viewers. The plants and stones and rivers are my viewers, and my work is done for them. I see these as acts of gratitude, for the unrepayable gift of the plants and stones and soils that give their bodies to become artwork. Are my offerings enough? I want to become better at listening. At asking a plant whether it consents to me using its body and heeding its reply.

I return. To my body, to my womb, to the smell of plants and the wet clay between my toes. To the breath of the forest. With every cycle of the moon, every turn of the seasons, I return. I draw in closer and closer to a place of flow, of gratitude, of presence.