"If our society asserts that humans are separate from the rest of nature, and that human activity is central to the planet – then we end up perceiving nature as a source of material goods to be exploited and extracted for human profit."

CALCIUM projects is a collaborative duo by artist SV Randall and poet Laura Neal. Exploring entangled ecosystems and embedded narratives within nature. Through the lens of eco-poetics we translate environmental experiences into artistic contexts.

Could you tell us a bit about yourselves and your background? Where did you study?

Laura Neal: I am a poet and educator based in Dallas, TX USA. Before arriving in Dallas, I participated in artist fellowships across the United States. My research interests center documentary poetics, labor, ecology, anthropomorphism, tradition, and estrangement. I earned my MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland College Park USA.

SV Randall: I am a visual artist originally from New York. I received my MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University. I also participated in artist fellowships across the United States and abroad, including the Fine Arts Work Center where I met Laura. My research engages with material culture and explores themes of obsolescence, transformation, and the Anthropocene.

Could you share with us how the collaboration between the two of you began, and what initially drew each of you to explore the entangled ecosystems and embedded narratives within nature as your primary focus under the name CALCIUM projects?

Laura: SV and I met at an artist residency program in Provincetown, MA USA called the Fine Arts Work Center. It brings artists and writers together from various backgrounds. We started our first collaboration there after visiting his studio where SV was building a water well, but filling it with sulfur. I wrote a poem in response to the sculpture and we were enlightened by the ways in which our mediums transferred an experience and our instinct toward earth and structure.

SV: We plummeted into collaboration soon afterwards. We visited one another's studios and found overlaps in what we were doing. A year after meeting at the Fine Arts Work Center we established our artist collaborative CALCIUM Projects as a way to bridge those commonalities. Our collaboration stemmed from walking together and spending a great deal of time just being outside. We began collecting audio field recordings from our walks, which spiralled into developing a number of photo series, staging ephemeral installations, making sculptures, and most recently performing sound works. The environment remains at the forefront of our process.

Your project embraces the concept of "the edge" in permaculture, where diverse ecological communities converge. How does this idea of the edge inform your creative process and the narratives you explore within your installations, particularly in the context of humankind's relationship with nature?

Laura: The world is ever-changing and humankind is changing with it and all of our migrations, adaptations, and arrangements are entwined with the ecosystem, which is especially significant during this time of rapid climate shifts and geological unrest. The edge is an entry point, a site to gather and localize the accumulation of the daily cultural and environmental evolutions. Through documentary poetics, I archive and interrogate what exists and explore alternative ways of being.

SV: I think the process of forming an edge or a delineation between humankind and the environment has had a damaging impact on our relationship with nature. If our society asserts that humans are separate from the rest of nature, and that human activity is central to the planet – then we end up perceiving nature as a source of material goods to be exploited and extracted for human profit.

"thinking of all the things that drank me" offered an immersive experience that challenged our understanding of the human-nature dynamic. Can you reflect on how language, intuition, and eco-poetics played a role in shaping the exhibition's narrative and how they encouraged viewers to rethink their daily interactions with the environment during its run last year?

CALCIUM Projects: The origin of the exhibition began by noting our daily language and observations in the world and more specifically, our community. Ecopoetics is a genre of poetry that is environmentally centered along with our associations, perceptions, and relationships. When developing the works for the exhibition, we arranged the sculptures, large-scale prints, and poems in a way that opened the space toward discovery and recognition. The large scale prints were titled with a specific geographical location and the items on the print were debris we collected on our daily journeying. It was critical in this exhibition that viewers provided the subtext with their own daily interaction as we all reconsider what is worth our attention and what is at risk if we don’t.   

Tell us a bit about how you spend your day / studio routine? What is your studio like?

Laura: We actually have separate studio spaces as we have our separate practices. My writing process is organic and changes daily. I draft everything longhand and if I keep it, then I type it. One day I may write a series of images and another I may trace the etymology of a single word. Central to my routine is a deep listening and a deep reading. I'm influenced by social and environmental narratives and that layers my perspective. When I think there is something in my research that bends off the page, I take it to SV and see if we can develop it together.

SV: My studio routine ebbs and flows between moments of absorption, production and administrative tasks. When materializing a project, I work in large blocks of time from sunrise until late into the night. I currently work out of a small warehouse space filled with previous projects, experiments, and reference images and drawings pinned to the walls. Since I tend to work across mediums, I have a number of materials and tools from airbrushes and routers to saws and sewing machines. 

What artwork have you seen recently that has resonated with you?

Laura: I’ve recently collaborated with artist Stephanie J. Woods where I wrote a series of poems in response to her works. The exhibition was on display at the Sarasota Museum of Art in Florida, USA. The exhibition carried the themes of transatlantic cultural continuity, memory, and symbolic representations of Black self-expression. The poems that I wrote were also on view on the gallery walls and functioned as a conversation between the poems, the sculptures, and gallery visitors.

SV: Recently, I attended a sound installation by the art group, Therefore, that experimented with micro-sound and site-specific projection. The roots of the avant-garde transmedia project blended human and technological performance. It was an outstanding collaboration of artists from all fields including musicians, actors, and cinematographers directed by Dean Terry. They all worked together to create an atmospheric sonic environment. 

Is there anything new and exciting in the pipeline you would like to tell us about?

CALCIUM Projects: Yes! We will be conducting research at Pico Island this winter through the NU’VEM Artist Residency Program. Halfway between the United States and continental Portugal, Pico Island is one of the nine Azores islands in the Atlantic Ocean. While there, we will be working on a number of projects engaging directly with the site as we unpack some of the material histories unique to this volcanic island.

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All images are courtesy of the artist
Date of publication: 16/10/2023