My work grows organically from time spent wandering in the urban streams and forest buffers of Baltimore. These hidden waterways were designed to channel storm water from all our impervious surfaces like roads, shopping malls, and housing developments. The water transports all the trash and pollution it collects along the way, to the Jones Falls, then the Chesapeake Bay, and out to the Atlantic Ocean. While hiking, I feel a mixture of awe at the lush life that manages to grow in such an abused environment and horror at the way we have treated the earth. I worry about climate collapse and especially my daughter’s future.

For a long time I grieved and raged. Now I use my skills and a little sorcery to change the valence of the trash I collect from negative to positive. I weave the overlooked into a poetic visual presence I hope can remind us all that our earth is beautiful and complicated and magical. This process of observing nature, collecting trash, and making art has become a spiritual practice for me.

These sculptures are each based on a bird I have traveled through the outdoors with. Many of the wood pieces I use come from trees knocked over in a flood so I can use parts of the roots where a stone got incorporated in the wood. This resiliency during growth is an inspiration to me. People who live close to the land and make everything they need must use what they can find in their immediate environment. I enjoy that kind of resourcefulness. Each piece is a manifestation of many days of labor. This kind of devotion only happens when we love something. I love this planet and am grateful for the places my feet touch the ground here.

If the Anthropocene is the geologic era where we humans affected the earth in a disastrous way, the Symbiocene would be a time when we learn to live in communion with the planet again. After fretting for years about the state of the health of our planet, I have begun to think of myself as the Symbiocene Epoch Shaman. I have developed an artistic and spiritual practice of being a part of the land I walk. Everything I make is of that land and my intimate knowledge of the plants, creatures, rocks, weather patterns, and pollution. These garments are made from things I found in the streams of Baltimore City or junk shops here. They are what I imagine would be worn in a time when the climate has collapsed and we have made shelter, found food, and are now looking for the meaning of life described in a more modern way than our old spiritual practices. I weave the overlooked into a poetic visual presence I hope can remind us all that our earth is beautiful and complicated and magical. 

These adorned bone-like sculptures are both memorial and messenger, epitaph and prophecy, funeral dirge and call-to-arms.

Jordan’s art practice and life are intertwined. Her studio space includes the abused and forgotten patches of land sandwiched between roads and urban streams.  A magical realm of tangled forest writhes along the edges of these streams. Ideas germinate during her wanderings in these zones as she practices looking for nothing and everything at the same time. Her natural sense of time and place is restored by absorbing all the patterns of seasonal changes, animal activities, growth, and decay.      

These urban waterways carry the flood of storm water from the surfaces of our human-built landscape out to the Chesapeake Bay and the ocean beyond. The water gathers whatever it encounters in the roads and gullies. This flotsam and jetsam whispers clues to life. Found objects and foraged organic materials later combine in the studio as spiritual translators for Earth’s pleas and wisdom. Jordan speaks in the language of the terrain we zoom past every day, busy ignoring our breathing earthling brethren.

These forests have witnessed and been victims of our human folly for hundreds of years now. Some trees seem to gesticulate as spokespeople, warning of the looming climate cataclysm. The large works combine these patient arboreal expressions with phrases from female environmentalists, poets, and social justice activists. Jordan is inspired by these brave women who were often themselves victims of injustice and their work was often ignored. Degradation of women and abuse of the Earth historically go hand in hand. Each sculpture was designed with some of these writings in mind.

I create objects from the confluence of materials left on the shores by the floodwaters.

When I walk the urban wilds of stream water run-off forests, I feel set free from the organization of the chronological timeline we have in our heads. I become one with the cycles of the seasons, the immense power of floodwaters, the tracks a heron leaves. The past, present, and future merge into one.

Since most of my urban wilds are only traveled by animals, I can imagine the beauty and grandeur of Mid-Atlantic North America before colonists arrived.

Or I can focus, like an archaeologist, on the man-made objects now claimed by the stream or forest floor, and ponder the marks of human behavior.

Eventually I feel as though I am out to forge a life in this terrain. Survival. What might I find that is edible or useful.

This leads me to feel a bit post-apocalyptic. How would I describe the meaning of life given a clean slate to invent a my own spirituality formed by this place?

2019
This project grew out of spending time in an urban stream with my daughter. At first I was appalled at the condition of the stream and its banks. As I watched my daughter intuituively interact with the environment I saw deeper into the place and all the life it created and supports. She spontaneously built shelters, weapons, rituals, stories. These works are built in salvaged windows and hold the evidence of what we saw, found, and created on our adventures.

10x10" poems on weathered plywood with found objects from urban streams, maps, buttons.
These are quiet meditations about life.

2019

These pieces are carved wood found in urban streams. When streams flood due to storm drain run-off, they change the surrounding ladscape dramatically. It feels post-apocalyptic with all the trash and devastation. The rising swift water often knocks down trees, exposing the root balls. If the tree grew in a rockky area, the roots had to grow between and around rocks. If unable to do that, the roots just absorb the rock and keep going. I find these rare occurences and harvest them. I use hand tools to make what look to tools or spiritual devices for use in a post-apocalyptic landscape where I am living down by a stream. Mother nature and I create these together. 

Large-scale charm bracelet carved of wood. Western Christian symbols of good will intertwined with shackles of slave-trade era. Represents our parallel and conflicted historical narrative, of good will, and our relationship to others and objects

These are large scale carvings of wood and found objects. They speak to socio-economic, environmental, and emotional issues.

Large scale wood carvings with assemblage of found objects addressing socio-economic, evironmental, emotional, and spiritual issues