Endangered

Exhibited: Massillon Museum of Art, 2020

Endangered, the body of work shown at the Massillon Museum of Art in 2020, began with collaged landscapes exploring forms and narratives related to nature, animals and luxury. In this work, I analyze patterns in development, population loss, land-use and climate change through layers of printmaking, painting, photography and drawing. The imagery is garnered from personal experiences with collaged elements from magazines and the internet. The various collaged elements, taken from magazines like Vogue or Martha Stewart, depict places of luxury and an appreciation for manicured nature, but these are not proper eco-systems for life to thrive and are available only to an exclusive, wealthy few.

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FEAST: a ballet

November 2020

FEAST: a ballet combines sculptural and painted objects created by visual artist Corrie Slawson with original choreography by dancers Christina Lindhout and Kelly Korfhage to explore the peaks and valleys of human consumption. With FEAST, the complex narratives of seven commodities—Beef, Bananas, Coffee, Sugar, Minerals, Rubber and Timber—are represented.

The story of FEAST is a window into a system of ruler and ruled, consumer and consumed, complicity and resistance, and the pleasure and pain it produces. Dissent and desire are tangled up within a system designed to exploit human and natural resources and leave only some on top.

The real-world inspiration for the setting of FEAST is America and Europe’s Gilded Age of unchecked wealth and growth. The ballet depicts how this time period was blinded by the glitter and glory of an endless cycle of overconsumption. The dancers fall prey to a system with deeply troubling structures: as it farms and manufactures our desires it also feasts on human bodies and natural resources.

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