The title of this show comes from Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, where she writes, “Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what's going on here.”

If life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, Katelyn Field Garcia uses photography to try and connect with that mystery, and to peer beyond what’s visible. As she moves through the natural world, she is drawn to the marks and patterns left behind by time, weather, growth, and decay. 

These “tracings” — the layers of sediment in stone, or the lines carved by beetles on a branch — are both mystery and evidence: visible residues of forces we can’t always see, but that shape the world around us. They hold memory, and suggest presence, yet don’t fully reveal it. They speak in a language beyond words — the language of life itself.

Art-making is Garcia’s way of listening, and “really seeing.” She gathers these fragments from the landscape, whether through photography or physically collecting. The resulting works include photos in various formats- ranging from more traditional to layered and fragmented. Photos are incorporated into sculptures along with collected items to bring the materiality of the natural world into the pieces.

From what the resulting works reveal, she hopes to challenge the idea that we stand outside the landscape, looking in. We are not separate from it. We are inextricably interconnected, shaped by the same slow and ancient cycles of life.

Artist Bio:

Born in 1996, Katelyn Field Garcia (she/her) grew up in Cache Valley, Utah. She received her BFA from Brigham Young University in 2022 and currently lives and works in Provo, Utah. Her work is deeply rooted in the landscapes of Utah. She explores the interwoven relationship between Earth, body, and spirit through performance, photography, video, sculpture, and installation. As an extension of her practice, Garcia started Art+Nature Provo, an art workshop series that helps children foster their relationship with the Earth through making art.