Michelle Stuart

MOUNTAIN LAUREL

1994
seeds and pencil on china paper
16 x 12 inches

Though her artistic practice is diverse – encompassing site-specific earth works, installation, sculpture, photography, and drawing – the constant in Michelle Stuart’s work is her deep interest in nature and the cosmos. In Mountain Laurel, a single seed inhabits each cell of a delicately drawn grid. Stuart actually presses the seeds into paper, merging material with support, a process she developed earlier in Post-Minimal works from the 1970s where she rubbed soil into paper and fabric. A cosmic cycle of life/death/rebirth is present in the work as the seeds (the birth of a plant) fuse with the paper (fiber from a harvested plant). Stuart’s work has been exhibited internationally, and is in the collections of museums worldwide.