For The Pit’s second online viewing presentation, we’re happy to share with you Heather Rasmussen’s latest works made during the time of the Covid-19 crisis.  Rasmussen’s work packs a particularly poignant punch during this time as it considers themes of life cycles, decay, and the intrinsically connected relationship between humans and nature.

A central part of her photographic output relies on a separate personal practice, that of growing, cultivating, and harvesting vegetables and plants from her garden; both for her family and to use in her studio practice.  During these past months of quarantine, where we’ve been forced to remain at home, more and more of us have been seeking ways to connect with nature and to find moments of escape from our own domestic settings.  While viewing social media streams of colleagues during these months, it seems that gardening is becoming a near universal interest of those quarantined (alongside baking).  Rasmussen’s photographs continually incorporate vegetation in its many forms from freshly grown and glistening, to molding and contorted.  Often times images of the plant life are juxtaposed along with the artist’s physical form, or arrangements of items from the artist’s life.  No matter what state of decomposition the vegetation is in, the photographs are undeniably beautiful, often times surreal and ethereal. These moments of photographic contrast set forth notions of our own lifecycle as humans, our impact on nature and ultimately our own fragility in a rapidly changing world.  Looking at these works during the current pandemic, these charged metaphors ring all the more potent as our culture, society, and government shift paths on how to respond to the virus seemingly on a daily basis.  

The need to find transcendent moments of self contemplation in a time of great turmoil has more people looking inward to personal private practices. These modalities not only reconnect  us with nature, they also allow us to escape our homes and the bombardment of media and conflicting advice on moving forward during this pandemic.  These latest works by Rasmussen continue her artistic practice and modes of presentation that she’s been working in prior to the emergence of Covid-19, yet their emotional resonance takes on new meaning in light of our current situation.