Artist Statement

My work asks questions including: “Are we made of place? Can objects influence who we are? Who would we be if we all spoke the languages of our landscapes?” and “How can we create meaningful rituals that connect us back to ourselves and our intuition?”

The question of how the connections between people, places, and things make us who we are is at the core of my creative process. Born the fourth-generation of my family in San Francisco and raised in the oak woodlands on the rural San Antonio creek border of Marin and Sonoma Counties, I believe that everything is animate and infused with energy that is ready and waiting to be in relationship with us. While we often consider relationships with people as being influential in our lives, I also believe that place and things play transcendent roles and that we are ultimately made of all these relationships.

In an object-based culture that uses an object-based language, it is now more important than ever to remember that life is not made up of “resources” for us to “use”, but that we are in relationship with everything. Through my work, I show and explore those living relationships.

—Kary Hess, Petaluma, CA