Smoke and Water, Cadmium, 2016

Many ecological disasters are problematically not able to be clearly seen. However, in 2014, when 39,000 tons of coal ash spilled through eighty miles of the Dan River in North Carolina and Virginia, I was captivated by an image of the ash swirling on the river’s surface. In particular, I was struck by the plain contradiction of how something so ruinous to both nature and humans could appear so beautiful and pleasing to the eye. This spill was the conceptual, visual, educational, and political driver of the Smoke and Water project (2014 - 2018), a series of installations, paintings, and murals that were made collaboratively with numerous communities of families, non-profits, colleges, and museums. The participation of these diverse painting hands made this pollution both visible and deeply felt, bringing the story of coal ash’s ecological and human hazards to a larger audience.