GIVING FORM TO THE FORMLESS
2023 - present
Project overview
drawingS
SCULPTURES
VIDEOS
This project is made possible by support from the Pacific Northwest College of Art’s Center for Contemporary Art & Culture, Watershed Center for Print, and Playa at Summer Lake.
Windsocks 2025-present
Rudimentary tools such as windsocks and weather balloons endure as scientific measures for the invisible forces that shape the world around us. Erosion control fabric is meant to keep entropy at bay and yet has been found to poison watersheds with microplastics. I upcycle the fabric in partnership highway departments, sewing windsocks that might be too large to be moved by the wind. My windsocks help give form to the vast mysterious dynamics that shape our lives - gravity, wind, grief, and hope.
the source never diminishes 2025
erosion control fabric sourced from the Utah Department of Transportation, PVC, wire, satin
120 inches x 140 feet
The Source Never Diminishes is inspired by the law of conservation of energy, a fundamental principle in physics which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed... only transformed from one form to another. In Elder’s work, this scientific law becomes a poetic metaphor for resilience, transformation, interconnectedness, and the enduring potential of matter, memory, and meaning. Just as energy shifts from one state to another—light to heat, motion to stillness—Elder’s art explores how grief can become beauty, how destruction can give rise to creation, and how loss can be a source of connection and renewal. Sewn from nearly six miles of upcycled erosion control fabric, and using over ten miles of thread, this sculpture is intended to confound singular viewpoints, and can not be seen from one perspective. Commissioned by the Galleries of Contemporary Art at The University of Colorado in Colorado Springs, this work will be on display for several years in the lobby of the Ent Center for the Arts,
to the center, from the center 2025
Watercolor, gouache, natural pigment, and ink on paper
70+ paintings, each 9 x 12 inches
Evidence of daily meditative practice, these paintings are inspired by early scientific attempts to understand the formation of the Earth.
WAR KITE 2024
Kevlar, satin, cotton, silk, ribbons, ocean polished asphalt, glass prism
120" x 24”
In October 2023, children in a Palestinian refugee camp were given kites and encouraged to go and fly them. The Israeli army bombed them with white phosphorus, and the kite strings became conduits for the chemical that burned many of them to death. I made this kite from remnants of Israeli military uniforms which, like many genocidal weapons, are funded and made by the United States. Like a person flying a kite in a storm, I feel tension and fear for what I am tethered to.
DOING AND undoing 2023
13 minute looping video with sound
Featuring: Connie Zheng, Esy Casey and Nina Elder
Camera: Esy Casey
Sound: Darius Holbert
Bunny Mellon, wife of American Industrialist Paul Mellon, owned a collection of books on witchcraft and spells. Among them, a dog-eared page describes a spell for doing and undoing. Under a full moon, three white virgins are to pass stones from a graveyard from hand to hand, a dozen times in one direction, and then a dozen times in reverse. The Mellon family - responsible for the extraordinary expansion and profiteering of extractive industries, banking, and shipping - were instrumental in the doing of American dominion and the undoing of ecological harmonies. This spell, cast under the full moon at the Mellon Estate, hails a new era of doing and undoing.