“Our larger self, our greater body.”
- Joanna Macy

Core Collaborators

Artist: Schessa Garbutt
Behind the Scenes Photography: William Rouse

Artist Residencies

California Coast in Color Residency
Black Image Center
April-June 2025, Los Angeles, CA

About

The Eco-spirituals series calls us to acknowledge our deep, interwoven relationship with the land, water, and sky. When we look out over the great blue expanse that covers 71% of our planet, we can’t help but acknowledge the parallels with our own bodies, as human brains and hearts are 73% water. The late Joanna Macy, Buddhist eco-philosopher and author, calls the Earth “our larger self, our greater body.” This series travels across California to create portraits of both land and people using iron salt pigments, local waterways, and sunlight to make life-sized, eco-friendly imprints of each ecosystem. The humans featured will be park rangers, indigenous folks, and agricultural workers who are interviewed before and after the art-making to tell stories of eco-cultural memory, conservation, and translate what the land is asking of us.

Eco-Spiritual No. 2 – Plastocene

The shoreline is a sacred space, and coastal access is a human right. Humans have always been drawn to the Ocean as a source of food, transportation, ceremony, and inspiration. In “Plastocene (eco-spiritual no. 2)” (2025), Schessa Garbutt meditates on the liminality of the shore as a site for rituals (art-making), contemplation, play, and grief. The truth is that the Anthropocene may have already been subsumed by the Plastocene, the age of Plastic. Microplastics have been found in the Baltic Sea, at the bottom of the Marianna Trench, and at the top of Mount Everest. They have been found in our reproductive organs and inside of the blood-brain barrier. Schessa made this print on-site at Cabrillo State Beach near Long Beach. They are surrounded by kelps [Macrocystis pyrifera & others] pulled from the surf as well as inorganic trash collected from the shore, including a balloon, a soda can, a shovel, a straw, mascara, fishnet stockings, a toy fan, a chunk of burnt wood, and other objects. This 5’x7’ print was Garbutt’s final project as part of the inaugural cohort of the 2025 California Coast in Color residency with Black Image Center.