Salt Forms
Sculpture and Photographic Series | 2022–Ongoing | New York City and Santa Fe
Salt Forms is a series of sculptures and photographs that captures the slow formation of ocean salt. Some Salt Forms have been submerged in water from the East River in New York City, and some have been submerged in water from Santa Fe, New Mexico, based on its particular intersection of geological transformation, water scarcity, and cultural memory drawing on the desert’s mineral formations. The sculptures develop over time, like a photograph, and are visual records of water's rhythms, salt crystallization, and the passage of time through water bodies.
The photographs were made by placing soft steel discs into pools of water and documenting their transformation over days and weeks, as salt accumulated and corroded the metal. The resulting forms feel abstract, planetary, and luminous and reflect time, memory, and sea level change.
Project Details
- Years: 2022–2025
- Medium: Salt sculpture / archival pigment print
- Dimensions: variable
- Materials: Evaporated saline water, steel discs
- Locations of Origin: East River, NYC and Santa Fe, NM
“Salt Forms began with a need to better understand the waters that governed my life—especially while living in a flood-prone apartment near the water’s edge, but also while living in New Mexico with deep concerns about water's scarcity. I started observing water patterns daily, placing steel discs in shallow saltwater pools from local sources and watching them slowly change. Each disc became a marker of time, corrosion, and resistance. The water left behind salt traces that resembled moons and planets. The photographs track those transformations (some delicate, some violent) as the river, sky, and moon left their imprints on the metal. Kobo Abe’s Women in the Dunes stayed with me throughout this process. That novel, like this work, speaks to repetition, resilience, and the struggle to endure environmental shifts. Salt Forms is a visual meditation on those cycles, on forces that cannot be controlled, and the traces they leave behind.” - Mattingly
Description
Each photograph in Salt Forms documents a salt formation in process. The steel discs were submerged and left in place, then documented at intervals as the ocean water etched crystalline patterns into their surfaces. These works transform slow environmental change into legible, symbolic form; each image a witness to water and the passage of time.
Selected Works
Spring Tide, 2023, 20 x 20 Salt Photographic Sculpture, Original
Salt Moon, 2023, 20 x 20 Salt Photographic Sculpture, Original
Neap Tide, 2022, 20 x 20 Salt Photographic Sculpture, Original
Perigean Spring Tide, 2022, 20 x 20 Salt Photographic Sculpture, Original
King Tide, 2022, 20 x 20 Salt Photographic Sculpture, Original
New Moon, 2022, 20 x 20 Salt Photographic Sculpture, Original
Kohns, 2022, 20 x 20 Salt Photographic Sculpture, Original