American artist Michelle Stuart’s work is a testament to time and place. She often titles her works with reference to the locations where they are made or, more specifically, what they are made from. In Serpent Mound, Ohio, 1978–1979, four large swaths of unframed paper hang in a sequence, from lightest to darkest shade of earth. Stuart uses an old technique—frottage or rubbings—to create these works, gathering soil from specific sites and rubbing it directly into the paper to create a dense mass of color. Regarding the chosen site used for this work, she states, “Serpent Mound is very important to me in terms of saying so much about the past.” The past, in this case, extends back centuries. Dating to around 300 BCE, Serpent Mound is a Native American effigy mound in present-day Ohio. For Stuart, referencing Serpent Mound bridges her work to a genealogy of cosmological connections to the land.

–Amanda Muhlena, from the Glenstone Field Guide