Leora Armstrong

My practice is grounded with our relationship to more remote places, revealing sites I investigate using an artistic perspective of the senses. The use of the physical body is paramount as I hinge my senses more directly through touch and sound, threading my way through a place, it becomes an outline of work. I consider these as sensorial mappings. The sense of presence is an integral ingredient for my work. Like the Wayfinder, our retention of sensory experiences with the earth is participatory, remaining connected to land/place for its/our preservation. My practice of sensorial connection engages with the place as both a witness and a voice.

I utilize both community and the elements as collaborators within my practice, addressing time, weather, place, and loss. The work made from these journeys are extensions of the physical presence of sites, recording the actions, moments in time. Standing on iced waterways, imprinting these actions to recognize the existence and loss of the surface. The all-encompassing weather is the constant that unites us; we all experience its diverse effects. Weather defines us, yet it is indifferent and unpredictable, a constant shapeshifter, touching places and spaces, who stand like silent monuments witnessing.

Alternately, hinging sound to drawing is a practice I use to understand myself and my surroundings. Identifying these sounds, loosening their individuality, following their line, as they wrap around both places, time, and viewer. Shaking the soil off these rhizomes, unearthing the visual language to translate what I hear. We use semantic systems to order aural and visual responses but drawing/mark-making is a form of language, translating sensory experiences. Whether it is ice heaving, wind through grass, or my own breath in a place.

How we engage with places is essential – an overwhelming disconnection now streams from a million sources towards an overload that seems to attach blindness, deafness, muteness. We are losing our sensorial touch towards each other and this locus – the originator of our conscious experiences.