Anna
Rotty

spectrals from a shoreless sea

I strive for the feeling of lifting up a rock along the shore to see what world is living underneath. Spectrals from a shoreless sea embodies the pleasure and anxieties linked to water. Having grown up in the Northeast, I am amazed by the arid desert landscape of my new home in the Southwest. I'm fascinated by the Rio Grande as a fluid being with a complicated history. Last summer, I was shocked to witness the river dry up as far north as Albuquerque. This year it is overflowing. I have lived in places that flood often, or burn due to wildfire due to failed infrastructure. I reconstruct photographs in the studio, or within the landscape, that investigate the systems, both natural and built, that transfer energy and water from place to place. The piece Paradise Waterfall looms 10 feet tall, referencing a memory of swimming below a waterfall located in Butte County, California, near a site of failed energy infrastructure, causing one of the largest wildfires yet. Using materials like transparencies and mirrors, I invite movement through space and physical engagement, helping slow us down, pay attention, and shift perception; treating imagery of landscape as active rather than reiterating a passive gaze. I'm always looking for moments that access an emotional connection through light. I ask, how can we show land and water as fluid, reciprocal experiences, rather than as fixed representations?