A ghost forest is a coastal forest's edge that is dying from encroaching salt water. Rising seas resulting from climate change cause this salt water intrusion, particularly in places where the rivers meet the ocean. Though parts of the forest are dying, marshes are also migrating inland, and these ghost forests offer them a new home. Stands of trees that have died together because of saltwater intrusion have been called ''ghost forests'' for some time, but the use of the word ''ghost'' helps to forefront the remaining story or spirit of the trees. The idea of a ghost being left behind offers a tribute to life that is gone, but not forgotten.
Changes in environmental systems reveal human interconnectedness with the land around them. Actions ripple edgelessly from humans to our immediate environment and then from our particular ecosystem outward. Effects of these actions that can be read through the passing of time through careful observation of change. I observe changes in my own life and in the ecological and social communities of which I find myself a member.
To make the sculptures and compositions in Ghost Stories from the Forest I used wood, grass, and human detritus like cans, fishing lines, and crab baskets from these sites along the Atlantic coast in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina as well as the excess packaging and recycling that comes from my own daily household consumption. The actions I observe including nourish, soak, blend, build, destroy, intrude, steal, re-purpose, and more through the process of making the sculptures.
I remember learning about ecosystems as a child--a forest, a marsh, an ocean--but we didn't spend time learning of the places where these systems overlap and rely on one another, leading me to think of them as autonomous environments in my logical mind. On the other hand, I grew up in the middle of North Carolina, so my sensorial experience with ecosystems was that they blur gently into one another: driving east from Fayetteville to Wilmington the pines melt into the marshes and then into the sea, driving west from Fayetteville, the lowlands give way to rock outcrops and rolling hills and finally the ancient Appalachian Mountains.
There are no tidy lines between forest and marsh, and there are no words for the middle places, but there they are, revealing their betweenness, and inviting me to become a student of the interconnectedness of the world.
