Magdolene Dykstra is an artist and educator based in St. Catharines, ON, Canada. Her installations and mark-making practice toggle back and forth between minimizing and asserting the presence of an individual. Working with unfired clay enables Magdolene to meditate on our interconnectedness with each other and with the Earth.
While at NES, Magdolene is translating her mark-making practice into a series of rock drawings. This series blends references to prehistoric petrographs and conceptual art. In contrast to conceptual drawing where the artist provides the score, in these works the rocks provide the directions for each drawing. Magdolene presses clay into the grooves that track the formation of these non-human bodies, leaving the trace of her body in the clay which records her fingerprints. These ephemeral interventions are preserved through photographs, as the clay returns to the Earth. As Octavia Butler wrote, ‘The only lasting truth is Change.’
Follow her @magidykstra and go to magdolenedykstra.com to see more.