America’s Landscape, Incorporating Thomas Doughty's, Morning Among the Hills
America’s Landscape, Incorporating Thomas Doughty's, Morning Among the Hills, 2026, saw dust, clay, styrofoam, trash bags, newspaper, artificial turf, pool noodles, mirror, glue, post-consumer recycled plastic, paint, multi-media, enlarged vinyl printed reproduction of Thomas Doughty's painting, Morning Among the Hills, (1829–30, PAFA, 1879.8.4), Sound engineering by Michael Lawson, Digital projection animation by Daniel Lynn Childers, 144 × 216 × 204 inches
In America's Landscape, Incorporating Thomas Doughty's, Morning Among the Hills, Peoples interrogates the myth of the untouched American wilderness through a room-sized diorama set against a large-scale vinyl reproduction of Thomas Doughty's romanticized landscape. Rudimentary stage lighting and sound effects animate the state park-like scene. A campfire glows near a majestic mountain constructed from purple plastic trash bags filled with recycled newspapers. A picnic table sits on site, available for use.
Doughty's Morning Among the Hills belongs to the Hudson River School, a movement that sought to establish an independent American artistic identity by depicting the natural world as a site of divine encounter. That same sense of the divine landscape animated Manifest Destiny: the belief that European settlers were ordained to carry their morality, religion, and democracy westward across the continent. Over time this romantic vision became justification for violence, genocide of the Native Americans, and the Mexican - American War. The untouched wilderness depicted in these paintings was seen as confirmation of superiority and validation of the project to impose agriculture, Christianity, and governance over the indigenous peoples and lands.
In Peoples' diorama, the outdoors immediately reveals itself as tableau. Every element is an artificial stand-in pointing to a cultural construct rather than nature. Purple trash bags rise into "purple mountains majesty." The campfire flickers on cue. The exposed lighting and sound equipment simultaneously build and dismantle the illusion. Even the state-park scene reveals a landscape that has been staged, curated, and packaged for convenient consumption. Each deliberate substitution lays bare the myths through which a shared national reality was, and continues to be, constructed through the American landscape.
A note about sound:
Peoples recorded homemade foley sounds on her phone for the soundscape that accompanies the installation. This ten minute audio plays on an infinite loop and offers a mirroring halfway through as it begins to play backwards.
She uses her body and breath by way of confessional whispers and emotive sighs to contort an auditory experience into an observational act. In collaboration with talented sound engineer, Michael Lawson, Peoples turns mundane, everyday objects like empty potato chip bags, plastic spray bottles, nearly empty seltzer cans, umbrellas and uncooked rice into nature personified.
A note about projection:
Diatoms are a type of single-celled, silica-shelled algae found in almost all aquatic habitats including lakes, ponds, streams, rivers, and the ocean. Diatoms take the shape of ovals, circles, ribbons, fans, zigzags, or stars. “Diatom Art” emerged as a 19th-century art form and fascination for amateur naturalists in the Victorian era. Artists would arrange the minute diatoms into precise patterns with a teeny horse hair “tool” into intricate, colorful, kaleidoscopic compositions onto microscope slides smaller than 1mm.
Animator, Daniel Lynn Childers assisted Peoples by enlarging each symmetrical diatom arrangement into dynamic spinning animations to reveal a secret unseen world represented within a body of water.
Doughty's Morning Among the Hills belongs to the Hudson River School, a movement that sought to establish an independent American artistic identity by depicting the natural world as a site of divine encounter. That same sense of the divine landscape animated Manifest Destiny: the belief that European settlers were ordained to carry their morality, religion, and democracy westward across the continent. Over time this romantic vision became justification for violence, genocide of the Native Americans, and the Mexican - American War. The untouched wilderness depicted in these paintings was seen as confirmation of superiority and validation of the project to impose agriculture, Christianity, and governance over the indigenous peoples and lands.
In Peoples' diorama, the outdoors immediately reveals itself as tableau. Every element is an artificial stand-in pointing to a cultural construct rather than nature. Purple trash bags rise into "purple mountains majesty." The campfire flickers on cue. The exposed lighting and sound equipment simultaneously build and dismantle the illusion. Even the state-park scene reveals a landscape that has been staged, curated, and packaged for convenient consumption. Each deliberate substitution lays bare the myths through which a shared national reality was, and continues to be, constructed through the American landscape.
A note about sound:
Peoples recorded homemade foley sounds on her phone for the soundscape that accompanies the installation. This ten minute audio plays on an infinite loop and offers a mirroring halfway through as it begins to play backwards.
She uses her body and breath by way of confessional whispers and emotive sighs to contort an auditory experience into an observational act. In collaboration with talented sound engineer, Michael Lawson, Peoples turns mundane, everyday objects like empty potato chip bags, plastic spray bottles, nearly empty seltzer cans, umbrellas and uncooked rice into nature personified.
A note about projection:
Diatoms are a type of single-celled, silica-shelled algae found in almost all aquatic habitats including lakes, ponds, streams, rivers, and the ocean. Diatoms take the shape of ovals, circles, ribbons, fans, zigzags, or stars. “Diatom Art” emerged as a 19th-century art form and fascination for amateur naturalists in the Victorian era. Artists would arrange the minute diatoms into precise patterns with a teeny horse hair “tool” into intricate, colorful, kaleidoscopic compositions onto microscope slides smaller than 1mm.
Animator, Daniel Lynn Childers assisted Peoples by enlarging each symmetrical diatom arrangement into dynamic spinning animations to reveal a secret unseen world represented within a body of water.
The Aesthetics of Violence
Slow Burning Rapture: The Aesthetics of Violence and Other Tales of Pageantry - or - The Creation Mythos
The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, February 9 - May 4, 2024
Curated by Kristina Murray and Micah Lockman-Fine
The Aesthetics of Violence and Other Tales of Pageantry - or - The Creation Mythos, 2024, Styrofoam, wood, antique nails, salt, paint, glass eyes, found objects, digital projection, ashes, 96 x 90 x 96 inches
Sarah Peoples' installation The Aesthetics of Violence and Other Tales of Pageantry - or - The Creation Mythos, featured in the exhibition Slow Burning Rapture, explores the Finnish national epic, Kalevala. This 19th-century story details the creation of the world and the adventures of the mythical hero Lemminkäinen. The Kalevala, translated as "Land of Heroes," was introduced by the Finnish government to foster national unity and independence through shared cultural narratives. Its enduring influence is evident in its inspiration of numerous artistic works, including J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Jean Sibelius' renowned Lemminkäinen Suite, Op.22.
Peoples explores the epic's core themes: conservation of the natural world, cultural fascination with brutality, reverence for mysticism, and the universal aspects of human experience encompassing both pain and joy. She focused the Kalevela narrative primarily from the perspective of Lemminkäinen's mother, delving into the heroic determination of maternal love and the symbiotic relationship between mother and child. The installation centers on a pivotal moment in the epic: Lemminkäinen's death after attempting to shoot the sacred swan of the underworld, and his mother's subsequent quest to resurrect him.
Sarah Peoples' installation The Aesthetics of Violence and Other Tales of Pageantry - or - The Creation Mythos, featured in the exhibition Slow Burning Rapture, explores the Finnish national epic, Kalevala. This 19th-century story details the creation of the world and the adventures of the mythical hero Lemminkäinen. The Kalevala, translated as "Land of Heroes," was introduced by the Finnish government to foster national unity and independence through shared cultural narratives. Its enduring influence is evident in its inspiration of numerous artistic works, including J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Jean Sibelius' renowned Lemminkäinen Suite, Op.22.
Peoples explores the epic's core themes: conservation of the natural world, cultural fascination with brutality, reverence for mysticism, and the universal aspects of human experience encompassing both pain and joy. She focused the Kalevela narrative primarily from the perspective of Lemminkäinen's mother, delving into the heroic determination of maternal love and the symbiotic relationship between mother and child. The installation centers on a pivotal moment in the epic: Lemminkäinen's death after attempting to shoot the sacred swan of the underworld, and his mother's subsequent quest to resurrect him.
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The centerpiece of the installation is a larger-than-life flayed écorché, representing the fallen hero Lemminkäinen in front of a projected image of a modern operating room. The teal/turquoise color of the operating room projection, complements the écorché's palette and depicts modern methods of "resurrection" or healing. This juxtaposition of ancient and modern medical practices - from a mother piecing together her child with honey to high-tech surgical procedures - creates a cinematic theatricality that emphasizes the passage of time while blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. A black oval at the foot of the installation symbolizes the river of the underworld from which Lemminkäinen's mother retrieves her son's body. Peoples incorporates wood ashes into the installation, a recurring element in her work simultaneously representing the finality of cremation and the hope of new beginnings, echoing the cyclical nature of life and death present in the Kalevala. |
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The artist's feminist perspective is evident in her treatment of the female characters in the myth. Peoples draws attention to the fact that women in such narratives are often defined solely by their relationships to male characters, noting the repeated use of "anxious" to describe Lemminkäinen's mother, almost to the point where it becomes a stand-in for her name. By reinterpreting the Kalevala through a feminist lens and incorporating modern elements, she creates a work that is at once deeply rooted in tradition and strikingly relevant to contemporary discourse on gender, motherhood, and national identity.
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Press Release, The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education
Throughout history, humans have crafted stories which grapple with our ever-changing relationships to the natural world. Artists, too, create, dissect and disseminate work which makes sense of our ecological past, present and future. In Slow-Burning Rapture, artists construct personal and communal tales, interrogate nationalist epics and envision post-natural topographies through material play, building multifaceted myths which forecast our human-nature relationship in the Anthropocene.To achieve this end, electronic waste is woven together to create a river-like installation (Talia Greene); a beloved Finnish myth is theatrically brought to life through styrofoam, wood and salt (Sarah Peoples); animation software and drone footage meld to create a new social model in the form of a cityscape (Tim Portlock); 3D modeling is used to generate colorful, imagined rocks and minerals to “power” our cell phones (JULM Studios); and a sonic broadcast set in the near-distant future envelops the gallery space in sound (Jordan Deal).
The artists in this exhibition employ satire, reverence, trepidation and humor to make their point: that as our planet evolves and our landscapes change, our collective stories will continue to resonate. With vast references from mythology to mysticism and Afrofuturism to worldbuilding, and with nods to beloved creators like Octavia Butler and Joseph Campbell, each artist’s visual and sensory language plays a part in helping unravel the complexities of an altered world.
Throughout history, humans have crafted stories which grapple with our ever-changing relationships to the natural world. Artists, too, create, dissect and disseminate work which makes sense of our ecological past, present and future. In Slow-Burning Rapture, artists construct personal and communal tales, interrogate nationalist epics and envision post-natural topographies through material play, building multifaceted myths which forecast our human-nature relationship in the Anthropocene.To achieve this end, electronic waste is woven together to create a river-like installation (Talia Greene); a beloved Finnish myth is theatrically brought to life through styrofoam, wood and salt (Sarah Peoples); animation software and drone footage meld to create a new social model in the form of a cityscape (Tim Portlock); 3D modeling is used to generate colorful, imagined rocks and minerals to “power” our cell phones (JULM Studios); and a sonic broadcast set in the near-distant future envelops the gallery space in sound (Jordan Deal).
The artists in this exhibition employ satire, reverence, trepidation and humor to make their point: that as our planet evolves and our landscapes change, our collective stories will continue to resonate. With vast references from mythology to mysticism and Afrofuturism to worldbuilding, and with nods to beloved creators like Octavia Butler and Joseph Campbell, each artist’s visual and sensory language plays a part in helping unravel the complexities of an altered world.
Baby Shower
Baby Shower, Found object Neoclassical fiberglass tub surround, caulk, soap, wood, 7’ x’5’ x 20”, 2024
Baby Shower reveals one of the most haunting American stories. In low sculptural caulk relief on a fiberglass shower wall, three putti raise their hands in surrender. Their soft round feet are planted in a field of wildflowers, but they are flanked by soap casts of firearms and bullets that transform the mundane materials into an altarpiece. Decorative fruits and flowers hanging over their childlike faces invoke Biblical allegories of temptation, corruption, and inherited sin. Putti, traditionally symbols of purity, divinity, or sentimental childhood, are transformed into vulnerable hostages. Their raised hands invoke images of state violence and wartime executions, their innocence perpetually endangered by the threat of gunfire.
A baby shower is a joyous occasion hosted by loving family and friends to welcome a new baby into the world. Showers are spaces associated with cleansing, intimacy, and bodily vulnerability, yet here the shower becomes the site of violence and dread. The shower curtain functions as a threshold between private and public space, concealment and revelation. The viewer must peer through the curtain to witness the scene. The curtain neither fully hides nor fully exposes; instead it implicates the audience in a voyeuristic encounter with violence. Ultimately, Baby Shower reinforces the exhibition’s charged frameworks, staging moments in which looking itself becomes ethically dubious. Peoples’ suggests that brutality is not external to American mythologies of domesticity and innocence but embedded within them.
