Immense branches of kelp undulating across the surface of the water, linking one perspective to another to evoke the superhuman growth of two feet per day. The hypnotic rippling punctuated by women’s analogies to their daily lives. Two feet, sixty-five centimeters: the length of a forearm, the size of a baby, the height of a beehive… The back and forth between text and image highlight the impossibility of grasping this vegetation in constant metamorphosis, very essence. The languages that follow one another create a psalmody, evoking mediating poetry, essential artistic metabolism. Artist and activist, founder of the Loud Spring art tank, Kalie Granier lives and works in Santa Cruz. Eco feminist thought has developed in this California terrain, in intimacy with this strong and contrasting nature, inhabited by Native American spirituality. Kalie has made algae her outdoor studio, a nourishing anchor.
Kelp borders, among others, the entire Pacific coast of the American continent from North to South. And this botanical line embodies the existence of this algae on the earth. Kelp in its life force and its capacity to create oxygen is, like the forest, a place of wonder and rebirth. The often frightening, initiatory plant space in which to absorb oneself to exorcise the gangue of outdated patterns. Through her naturalistic practice, her commitment, the artist proposes to approach this strange species differently. The aerial caress of the camera, the momentary dive swept by the currents of the bay, all these attempts at contact with the other create friction, a sensitive touch. And this movement, Ophelian, silent, but filled with oxygen, opens, like any forest, to the promise of an awakening.