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Caroline Powell

Terra


June 2023
Two-color Risograph
40 pages
First edition of 100
$12





Terra is a story of upheaval, abandonment, and invasion. Set in the Hudson Valley, Terra explores what it’s like to inhabit the ruins of former empires. Stone walls, barbed wire, and wolf trees set the scene for the characters of Terra as they navigate an era of flux and imbalance. The United Nations has declared this decade the ‘Decade of Ecosystem Restoration,’ but what will this mean for our characters who transcend the boundaries of native and nonnative, productive and destructive, civilized and wild. Regardless of their classifications, all three of our characters have made their homes in the Hudson Valley and they have become entangled in the history of this place.

The story of the Randall Lineback is one of industry, conquest, and now abandonment, forgotten as much for their contributions to the land as by the agricultural industry. The Gypsy Moth on the other hand is one of the fore figures of conservation and control, the main target of pheromone traps and mass pesticide spraying; but at what cost? Finally, the Red Worm, perhaps the least considered animal in our landscape, plays the role of architect in warming forest floors. All three tell a story about changes in the land, one that highlights a history in which flora and fauna have never been passive. Telling their stories means learning how to read presences and absences that reveal changes past and those yet to come.

To purchase please email me at: carolinexpowell [at] gmail [dot] com
or, find Terra at Topos Bookstore in Ridgewood, Queens.









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Bookmarks for Topos Bookstore Cafe
Ridgewood, Queens
Spring 2022

Collages created for the new bookmark designs. More images coming soon.
Randall Lineback Cattle

December 2020
35mm b&w photography
New Lebanon

2018-Ongoing, 35mm b&w photography
An ongoing series of photographs taken in upstate New York




























































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Your Future Was Not Mine

2017, installation with projections




Your Future Was Not Mine was an installation consisting of a wall size collage from a collection of images taken by photographer Julius Shulman in the 1950’s and 60’s that was then projected on top of to highlight certain images and sections of these images. For example, images of women working and images of fruit bowls. The projections help uncover the uncanny quality of the photographs by cropping in on repeated gestures and motifs that are still seen widely in images meant to portray good taste. A film of the projections was created for and shown in the Integrated Design Thesis show at Parsons in the Spring of 2017.

By replicating, re-ordering, and emphasizing details from a collection of oft reproduced images from the 1950’s and 60’s by photographer Julius Shulman, “Your Future Was Not Mine” aims to criticize the concept of good taste and present viewers with a new way of looking at this storyline. The goal of this work is to remediate the violence of inequality that these images perpetuate in their gender and racial norms, bringing into conversation our acceptance of these images and the narrow view of an ideal future that they have portrayed.

The project was based on research into the history of design and taste, specifically drawing influence from the Arts and Crafts movement of the 19th century and the resurgence of these ‘utopian’ ideals in design in the 1960’s in the United States.

 

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