Natalie Rae Good
Waste Land, Iowa, 2019-2020
Cyanotype on cotton rag paper
62 ½ x 51 ½ inches
Beyond her ceramic sculptures, Good’s larger body of work is concerned with mapping and recording time and its passage, earthly cycles, wind, memory, and the compulsion to assert power over the natural world.
In her large cyanotype works, sheets of cotton rag paper are coated with emulsion and exposed in the shadows of grasses and plants in areas where the natural world meets the industrial, designed world. In these forgotten parking lots and “wastelands", plants sway under the hot summer sun. As the photogram attempts to bear witness and capture this secret life, the wind resists the record, producing ethereal layers of ghost images.
Good couples numerous coats of emulsion with successive exposures to create a layered patchwork of blue shades. The rough edges and dirt-stained border of the paper are deliberately incorporated into the work as testimony to Good's process as she creates these works outdoors, directly on the ground.
