Calandra Cooper 2026

Cracked Earth

I am preparing work for my January art show and Cracked Earth is the first completed piece.

I am a process-based mixed-media artist. I work with traditional art materials, but I also incorporate natural dyes and substances such as plants, soil, spices and other materials that can leave their own color, texture and marks behind. I often begin without deciding exactly what the finished work should look like. The materials, the process and what happens along the way help determine what the work ultimately becomes.

Cracked Earth is part of Collaborative Emergence, a participatory art series I created to explore what happens when other people become part of an artwork's development.

Collaborative Emergence is inspired in part by Exquisite Corpse, the collaborative art game developed by Surrealist artists in Paris around 1925, including André Breton, Yves Tanguy, Marcel Duchamp and others. In Exquisite Corpse, participants contributed to a shared work in sequence, allowing chance and multiple creative voices to influence the final result.

My approach takes that idea in a different direction. I begin the work and invite others into portions of the process. Their participation changes the material and becomes part of the work's history. I then continue working with what has emerged, allowing those changes, the materials and my own artistic decisions to shape the finished piece.

For Cracked Earth, I worked on linen using cassava paste as a resist. During the communal portion of the project, participants helped remove the dried cassava from the cloth, physically changing the surface and leaving behind cracks, marks and irregularities that became part of the work.

Back in my studio, I continued developing the piece rather than trying to erase or control what had occurred. Using the cassava-resist batik process, turmeric, black walnut ink I made myself, acrylic, mica and cold wax medium, I worked with what was already present and allowed the piece to continue evolving.

The result is Cracked Earth.

For me, this piece represents much of what I value about process-based art: beginning with an idea, allowing materials, chance and human interaction to affect what happens along the way then responding as an artist to what emerges.

Cracked Earth, 2026 will be shown in my January 2027 exhibition as part of Collaborative Emergence.