Erica Rawson                                                        
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I Moved Ground and Dust to Keep You Here

Patinaed copper, crystallized alum, found objects, rotting fruit, 2024











             



Impermanence and decay are inherent truths of existence. We do our best to preserve, holding tight to the present through methods that change the structure we wish to keep—salting and pickling our foods, injecting and embalming our bodies, and protecting our precious possessions under covers to shield them from fingertips and faults. Still, nothing can exist forever in its current state. 

Food spoils, skin sheds, materials wither without maintenance… 

In the domain of human connections, love is not a fixed entity but a dynamic force, continuously transforming and redefining itself, akin to the materials we desire to maintain. The act of commodifying love through objects and the intent to protect and preserve paradoxically accelerate the very decay we aim to prevent. 

This decay is not equal to destruction but a disclosure–a stripping away of illusions to expose the core of truth.  

I Moved Ground and Dust to Keep You Here explores the whispers of abandoned domesticity, the illusion of control, and the radical freedom of letting go– acceptance of decay not as loss but as liberation. Precious metal protects sacred spaces, and preservation consumes. To enshrine is to possess; every edge is an entryway for rot, just as a squeeze becomes a bruise. 

There is something beautiful at the end of this journey…  
as the shell crumbles, framework for new growth is revealed  
and decay begets the new.