Blair Butterfield

Chasing Magic 2019

Human knowledge of the land is equally as endangered as the land itself.

How do we regain lost knowledge? How do we re-skill, pass stories and make heirloom family? Can these processes help our cultures enter again into a reciprocal relationship with nature? Chasing Magic is an installation and the result of a journey to heal and find magic in one’s life. This journey began with considering how to do more than sustain ourselves on this planet and choosing to regenerate our knowledge of land and ways to live lightly upon the planet.
The installation is comprised of field notes, photographs, and objects collected along a personal journey of surrender, learning, healing and growth. From traveling and farming throughout the Americas, I have been in reflection of the relationships humans have to the natural world. Along my path I observed that magic seems to prevail most among people who live in close proximity to nature. These are people who are caretakers of the place in which they live, cultivating and alchemizing with the elements that surround them. As a witness and participant in moments of magic, I have collected objects that not only represent a memory of a place, an action, or a person, but are also tools of ritual. Rituals that involve clearing energy, creating protection, grounding a person, manifesting intentions, opening and healing the heart, showing gratitude, and forms of divination.
Plant Portraits is a group of photographs that highlights our economic, medicinal, and spiritual relationships to plants and also includes images to represent the magic of the unknown. A portrait of Mayna Parvifolium, an unclassified fruit from the Southern Amazon of Peru, reveals that there remains much to discover on this planet and still time to save what is not yet lost.
A deep part of healing and regenerating is in our connection to each other, in our relationships, in our communities and in our families. In reflecting this, I display my personal notes, photographs, letters and writings that have been generated throughout the last two years. This archive embodies the importance of the roles we fill: as mother, wife, friend, teacher, student, and steward of heart and land in the Anthropocene. These are artifacts of time, of place, of thoughts, of that have become biographical, and familial archive.