Johnson’s Bayou

In June of 2011 Hall and her studio assistant drove an RV to the Gulf of Mexico to document detritus on the coast of Louisiana. The mobile studio allowed her to integrate “field work” into her studio practice. There are forty works as a result of collecting plastic containers, rope and gloves that washed up on shore each day from as far away as Haiti. She traveled to two sites: Johnson’s Bayou near the Texas Border and Constance Beach at the mouth of the Gulf below New Orleans. Collected detritus was embedded in handmade paper to document, map and preserve as relics of a specific time.

Each site resulted in different detritus. Constance Beach had clean up gloves from the oil spill washed up on shore as well as a “black sand” which was actually the coagulant used to dry up the oil in the water.

Each work is framed in a steel frame with glass so that if the work was tossed into the ocean only the plastic would not biodegrade.

Johnson’s Bayou 1-20 2020
Approximately 20″ x 27″ x 3″ each, individual pieces vary in size and depth

Handmade paper, detritus, steel