Screens > If I Lost You Would I Cry

Dedicated to the memory of Emily Novick

This installation at the Lexington Art League in Lexington, KY was inspired by my travel through the Midwest and Appalachia and the impact of mountaintop removal in coal mining operations near my home in Kentucky.

The abstracted landscape presented in this installation is united by a sense of vulnerability. The viewer is given a perspective from above, a vantage point of both power and protectiveness. The influence of sacred architecture is evident.

Mountains have long been used as metaphors for the extreme: grandness, vastness, and permanence. The language of mountains empowers us to describe things for which words fall flat. In this work I question the unmitigated pursuit of natural resources at the sacrifice/loss of cultural and spiritual resources.

Sarah Gross, 2013