In March 2020 - when Covid lockdown began - I started hiking the same five-mile trail at Loch Raven Reservoir, almost every day. This allowed me to experience the slow daily shifts of the seasons and observe the multitude of fungi that exist, often fleetingly. I hiked that trail so many times, that even in the winter, when it was snowy and the trail was gone, I mostly knew where I was going. On my way in, I would allow my mind to wander, often I would be called off trail for one reason or another, only to be rewarded by finding the most magical mushrooms. At some point, I realized I was practicing a walking meditation, an act of present moment awareness. I started noticing the smallest details, the way nature was in a constant state of flux, birth followed by death, then birth again, incessant change. Through photography, I documented the minutiae of the daily shifts occurring on the forest floor, in particular, the fungi. Once at my destination - a beautiful peninsula overlooking the top of the dam - I would meditate. I would also hug a nearby Beech tree and pray to my ancestors. On my hike out I would spend thirty minutes thinking positive affirmations and another thirty thinking about what I was grateful for. When friends hiked with me, they joined along, it was magical; each of us taking turns sharing our most vulnerable thoughts and feelings. A much-needed moment of deep connection amidst rampant Covid induced isolation. As I continued these daily self-care rituals and documenting the shifts occurring on the forest floor, something inside of me shifted as well. We're not taught how to love ourselves or how to heal from trauma. I've been doing healing work for many years; I've struggled with addiction, childhood trauma, and loss. But the healing that occurred during those daily hikes, because of my spiritual practices, was monumental. In visually creating a snapshot of this personal journey for the exhibition, Baltimore, Addressed: Baker Artist Awards at the Baltimore Museum of Art, I hope to offer the audience a place for quiet reprieve, where nature's beauty and wonder hold space for the connection and healing of all things. 

Heartfelt gratitude to the Baker Artist Awards, GBCA, the BMA, and all involved for making this project possible.  

In March 2020 - when Covid lockdown began - I started hiking the same five-mile trail at Loch Raven Reservoir, almost every day. This allowed me to experience the slow daily shifts of the seasons and observe the multitude of fungi that exist, often fleetingly. I hiked that trail so many times, that even in the winter, when it was snowy and the trail was gone, I mostly knew where I was going. On my way in, I would allow my mind to wander, often I would be called off trail for one reason or another, only to be rewarded by finding the most magical mushrooms. At some point, I realized I was practicing a walking meditation, an act of present moment awareness. I started noticing the smallest details, the way nature was in a constant state of flux, birth followed by death, then birth again, incessant change. Through photography, I documented the minutiae of the daily shifts occurring on the forest floor, in particular, the fungi. Once at my destination - a beautiful peninsula overlooking the top of the dam - I would meditate. I would also hug a nearby Beech tree and pray to my ancestors. On my hike out I would spend thirty minutes thinking positive affirmations and another thirty thinking about what I was grateful for. When friends hiked with me, they joined along, it was magical; each of us taking turns sharing our most vulnerable thoughts and feelings. A much-needed moment of deep connection amidst rampant Covid induced isolation. As I continued these daily self-care rituals and documenting the shifts occurring on the forest floor, something inside of me shifted as well. We're not taught how to love ourselves or how to heal from trauma. I've been doing healing work for many years; I've struggled with addiction, childhood trauma, and loss. But the healing that occurred during those daily hikes, because of my spiritual practices, was monumental. In visually creating a snapshot of this personal journey for the exhibition, Baltimore, Addressed: Baker Artist Awards at the Baltimore Museum of Art, I hope to offer the audience a place for quiet reprieve, where nature's beauty and wonder hold space for the connection and healing of all things. 

Heartfelt gratitude to the Baker Artist Awards, GBCA, the BMA, and all involved for making this project possible.  

While exploring Ladew Topiary Garden’s 22 acres of gardens and the historic Manor House, sculptor-in-residence, Laura Amussen found herself reminded of Mother Nature’s unwieldy propensity to consume abandoned or unattended structures and objects. In the Oval Library, a single sprig of ivy creeps through a grate on the floor. Visible through the window—just beyond the threshold—the ivy blankets the ground. Its presence threatening to overtake the inlaid drop-leaf gaming table and side chairs before making its way to the oval partner’s desk. One can easily imagine—if given time—the ivy swallowing these interior relics whole, as Mother Nature creates topiaries of Her own. Amussen’s piece Checkmate brings this playful fantasy to life. Artificial ivy spreads across the floor and over the furniture, leaving visible only traces of the structures beneath.

Taking cues from the ivy infiltrating the Oval Library, but also inspired by the follys, gardens, and topiaries found in Ladew’s gardens, Oval Library Topiary Folly, delightfully brings the inside out, a merger of both landscape and architecture. A large oval gazebo provides the framework for this structure, as again artificial ivy and flowers overtake the building. Most of these artificial flowers were bought second-hand, a deliberate choice by the artist. By using artificial plastic plant material Amussen hopes to draw attention to our worlds ecological concerns regarding plastic consumption and pollution.

Inspired by the abundance of seedpods that blanket Ladew’s Wildflower Meadow, Amussen renders the seed larger than life and draws parallels between nature and femininity, in her piece, Embedded in the seed is the blossom waiting to unfold.

"There are days I drop words of comfort on myself like falling leaves and remember that it is enough to be taken care of by myself." -Brian Andreas

Our current cultural and political climate is fraught with tension, our lives increasingly more stressful, and the world more hectic. These truths demand our constant effort and attention. Thus, it’s important - and difficult – to take time to replenish our mental, physical, and emotional reservoirs. Nature offers humanity reprieve and provides pictorial and poetic narratives: a moss blanket comforts a broken soul; a nest bursts from and engulfs a birdcage; a large-scale, site-specific, wall mounted mandala comprised of a thousand golden lotus seedpods begs the viewers to find stillness in contemplation; a wall of multicolored baskets symbolize our need to constantly hold and care for ourselves, especially when difficult life experiences arise; and, two smaller mandalas – one made of seeds, the other of Bodhi (ficus religiosa) leaf skeletons – speak of ritual and meditation. Transformed into visual expressions, materials become metaphor for these psychological associations. Each work relies on the repetition and expansion of a fundamental unit to explore the relationship of the physical to the psychological. In all the works, less is more. Spare forms and conceptual innuendo swiftly carry each work into the bio-philosophic. They establish connections between the inside and outside of the body and mind to consider our larger relationship to the natural world. The organic matter featured in this body of work metaphorically symbolize our collective human fragility; our need to be cared for and healed. 

"There are days I drop words of comfort on myself like falling leaves and remember that it is enough to be taken care of by myself." -Brian Andreas

Our current cultural and political climate is fraught with tension, our lives increasingly more stressful, and the world more hectic. These truths demand our constant effort and attention. Thus, it’s important - and difficult – to take time to replenish our mental, physical, and emotional reservoirs. Nature offers humanity reprieve and provides pictorial and poetic narratives: a moss blanket comforts a broken soul; a nest bursts from and engulfs a birdcage; a large-scale, site-specific, wall mounted mandala comprised of a thousand golden lotus seedpods begs the viewers to find stillness in contemplation; a wall of multicolored baskets symbolize our need to constantly hold and care for ourselves, especially when difficult life experiences arise; and, two smaller mandalas – one made of seeds, the other of Bodhi (ficus religiosa) leaf skeletons – speak of ritual and meditation. Transformed into visual expressions, materials become metaphor for these psychological associations. Each work relies on the repetition and expansion of a fundamental unit to explore the relationship of the physical to the psychological. In all the works, less is more. Spare forms and conceptual innuendo swiftly carry each work into the bio-philosophic. They establish connections between the inside and outside of the body and mind to consider our larger relationship to the natural world. The organic matter featured in this body of work metaphorically symbolize our collective human fragility; our need to be cared for and healed.

"The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace"                                                                                                          -Kate Chopin, The Awakening

As the former director of exhibitions and curator at Goucher College, I gained invaluable experience and insight pertinent to artistic and curatorial practice. As an artist, I brought that knowledge with me to the cavernous main gallery space of Baltimore's Creative Alliance. By applying a curatorial approach to my artwork, I used the gallery as a laboratory through which to experiment with process and work through ideas. This work came from an honest, tender and vulnerable place. AFLOAT is the culmination of my personal experiences over a 75 month period, including the end of a 17 year marriage, coming to terms with my sexuality, and the death of my mother. By way of sculpture, site-specific installation, photography, projection, video, and performance AFLOAT gives physical expression to what it means to carry mental and emotional baggage--the psychological jumble we accumulate, the worries, the burdens, the weight. Using water and a wide variety of elements associated with water, the works symbolize struggle and survival; they speak to being saved and saving oneself.

"The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace"     -Kate Chopin, The Awakening

As the former director of exhibitions and curator at Goucher College, I gained invaluable experience and insight pertinent to artistic and curatorial practice. As an artist, I brought that knowledge with me to the cavernous main gallery space of Baltimore's Creative Alliance. By applying a curatorial approach to my artwork, I used the gallery as a laboratory through which to experiment with process and work through ideas. This work came from an honest, tender and vulnerable place. AFLOAT is the culmination of my personal experiences over a 75 month period, including the end of a 17 year marriage, coming to terms with my sexuality, and the death of my mother. By way of sculpture, site-specific installation, photography, projection, video, and performance AFLOAT gives physical expression to what it means to carry mental and emotional baggage--the psychological jumble we accumulate, the worries, the burdens, the weight. Using water and a wide variety of elements associated with water, the works symbolize struggle and survival; they speak to being saved and saving oneself.

"The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace"                                                                                                             -Kate Chopin,The Awakening

As the former director of exhibitions and curator at Goucher College, I gained invaluable experience and insight pertinent to artistic and curatorial practice. As an artist, I brought that knowledge with me to the cavernous main gallery space of Baltimore's Creative Alliance. By applying a curatorial approach to my artwork, I used the gallery as a laboratory through which to experiment with process and work through ideas. This work came from an honest, tender and vulnerable place. AFLOAT is the culmination of my personal experiences over a 75 month period, including the end of a 17 year marriage, coming to terms with my sexuality, and the death of my mother. By way of sculpture, site-specific installation, photography, projection, video, and performance AFLOAT gives physical expression to what it means to carry mental and emotional baggage--the psychological jumble we accumulate, the worries, the burdens, the weight. Using water and a wide variety of elements associated with water, the works symbolize struggle and survival; they speak to being saved and saving oneself.

Influenced by environmental concerns as well as the rapaciousness of globalization these works encompass aspects of landscape and architecture in order to create metaphors of psychological space. In an increasingly globalized culture, a growing sense of placelessness makes it more and more difficult for us to place our own identity. These works are studies of geographic dislocation and its attendant complexities, as well as antidotes to the prevailing need to belong somewhere. In creating fictitious environments wrought with familiar details from built structures and the natural landscape the work is encoded with social and emotional values. In my restructuring of these elements, the familiar becomes unfamiliar, leading us to re-evaluate our sense of place in this energetic, overbuilt, and complex world. These fictitious environments blur the boundaries between landscape and architecture and scramble the distinctions between organic and synthetic. Ambiguous in nature they explore the experience of place - the accumulated life experiences of geographical places and psychological spaces.