Carried / Held

Maryland Institute, College of Art | Baltimore, MD | 2001

Carried / Held is an immersive installation composed of one hundred stones collected from the coast of Maine. Suspended in a circular formation, the stones hover above the ground, appearing almost weightless—adrift as though carried by a tidal current, yet held in stillness within the air.

Beneath each stone rests a custom-built box containing its inverse form cast in salt. These negative impressions reference the ocean that shaped the stones over time: saltwater, tide, and friction, gradually smoothing their surfaces through continual motion across the coastal basin. The installation makes this process visible by separating the object from the imprint—stone lifted above, salt holding its absence below.

The circle suggests cycles of ebb and flow, return and repetition, echoing the movement of tides and the lunar forces that guide them. Viewers moving around and within the formation experience a quiet choreography of suspension and gravity, solidity and dissolution. The stones appear momentarily untethered from the earth, caught mid-current, while the salt beneath them serves as a trace—a record of contact, pressure, and time.

Carried / Held reflects on movement as a shaping force. What appears fixed and permanent is revealed as the result of constant motion. The work holds stone and salt in tension, inviting contemplation of erosion, memory, and the invisible currents that shape both landscape and lived experience.