Emily Budd

With a background in bronze casting and paleontology, I am inspired by the application of a process and the passage of time as a means to transform. I use mold-making to document, like a photograph or a fossil, passing moments in time. Containing a memory of the past and a site for the future, the negative space of the mold represents the flux of the present, an inaccessible state between the edges of the past and the potential of the future. Through the use of various casting techniques that mimic the alchemical fossilization of objects across time scales, I speculate on lost and changing environments and altered material realities.

I use geologic forms and fictional artifacts to examine the human experience within the realm of deep time. Because of our limited perception of time, we cannot see the future outcomes of our present-day ecological, societal and material impacts. The geologic force of human alteration will be evident in future strata. Seeing our everyday materials and objects as speculative fossil evidence from the future is an intriguing way to visualize ourselves in terms of the Earth’s relentless elemental mud. By expansion upon and engagement with contemporary ideas of geologic time, I apply artistic transformative processes from which I excavate objects and tools designed for dismantling the limitations of how we perceive and conceptualize our own temporality.

Watch a bronze pour here.