Brita Sauer

I began with seeds: exploring the life cycles and the collective possibilities of seed stewardship. It came as a shock one Spring, when I let the kale overwinter and it set seed. The flourish of pods and, when cracked open, the little black seeds, each a kernel of new life, rolling in my hand rattled me in a profound way. A life-cycle, to which I was ignorant, suddenly revealed. This marked a change for me and now informs my creative process–a process that involves looking closely and trying to understand the many modes of connectedness between the human and the more-than-human. Plants offer so many opportunities for close looking and sustained vision and I am grateful for the mutual care involved in seed/plant/garden tending. Understanding pollination methods and who/what pollinates and how–there is a joyful clarity in bringing my attention to those relationships.

The vastness of the Chihuahuan desert, where I live, sometimes feels like a different exercise in attention. I forget to look down, to look closely, overwhelmed as I am with the radical openness of the world around me. When I think to return my attention to those often subtle and hidden plant/animal/insect lives around me, I am again and again bowled over by the explosion of life happening on a much smaller scale. I also acknowledge the fraught use/occupation of lands and the desert as sacrifice-zone and think to learn from that attention as well. Life-cycles, half-life cycles, there is still so much to learn.