Sedimentary Antiquity

Events

Through research and field study, Kevin Conlin has worked closely with the historical record contained in layers of clay and bedrock. As a ceramic artist and an amateur paleontologist, he anchors his practice in the vast record of the earth’s past and the inevitable effects that humankind will have on its future. Clay not only tells us about the ancient past, but embodies and contains traces of all living things; Conlin’s ceramic vessels and urns act as storehouses of this history. The hundreds of millions of years of the fossilized archive that Conlin excavates has only preserved traces of living things, posing questions of what will remain millions of years after human civilization is gone. Incorporating the most monumental pieces from his fossil collection, this new body of work challenges our understanding of time and suggests that instead of fossilized living creatures, we will leave behind a vast archive of objects and evidence of our insatiable use of natural resources.