work / Termite Totems (in progress)

Wood left to cure at Farm8 takes five years to harden. Through those years the termites work it, and once it turns hard they abandon it. What they leave is timber carved from the inside — galleries that read as pathways, a map of a city built underground.

The Termite Totems begin there. Lengths of this worked and abandoned wood are found on the land, stood upright and pinned together, so that the termites’ carving becomes the sculpture: co-sculpted with a more-than-human maker. “The termites did the carving. I did the finding, the lifting, and the holding still.”

The totems range from small to very tall, and are made to go back out onto the land, so that the farm is peopled by the record of its own makers. They grow out of the Deemak Drawings, which track the same colonies.

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