Lindsey Dunnagan

Artist Statement
Snow piled up so high in our backyard that it buried our fence. That’s when my brother and I started digging. We dug until we found the ground again—old grass long dead from the cold. Then we started building tunnels. Like ants, my brother and I shaped a new, unseen landscape under the crusty top layer of snow. In the summer, the ground was solid and unchanging, but in the Alaskan winter, it was easy to manipulate the terrain with just our bodies. Snow turned the environment into a vast expanse of playful possibilities. When looking back at my childhood of growing up in Alaska, I am struck by the magic in the landscape and how I was immersed in creation every time I bundled up to go outside. In Catching Shadows, this magic is captured through a fiber installation and two-dimensional artworks that abstractly layer Alaskan imagery, recalling the feeling of that space. The fiber installation, Land Enveloped, features hanging fabric walls that offer various paths, allowing for a sense of discovery as they can be manipulated to choose a new direction. The mixed media paper artworks deconstruct watercolor paintings, distorting perception and echoing the flawed nature of memory. This act of creating and destroying a painting in order to make something new allows space for pure play; it is a kind of call and response that is reminiscent of childhood games. The process of making this work parallels my glance back at childhood and its inseparable connection to the Alaskan landscape. By manipulating shapes from the place I love, the series evokes a panglossian nostalgia and invites the viewer to play.