BmoreArt

Earlier works like “Body Stigma, – what I am and what I am not” 2022, presented in Walton’s 2023 MFA thesis show at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, jar the viewer with violent amputations. The ceramic sculpture stands on a plot of soil, life-size from feet to navel with the upper half of the torso ripped away, exposing the spinal cord. Hands rest on the thigh and waist, bloody from where they’ve been severed while bruises run up and down the legs which have also been filled with dirt. 

In another work, “Cycles to Life//We Are Portals To What Is Unseen” 2022, a wheelchair grows from the ground like a tree, towering over viewers at seven feet in height. These works were Walton’s response to both a newly diagnosed illness and society’s perceptions of disability. As such, the work is highly reactive. Unafraid of “triggering people,” Walton’s frustrations filled the space with an unavoidable discomfort but left little room for resolution. Over time, they grew dissatisfied with this mode of working as they recognized a deficit of joy within their creative process. 

In a move inward, Walton began to reconnect with nature as part of their practice. This started with foraging their own clay from their backyard and wooded areas along the highway in addition to working with more biodegradable materials. Our discussion about the spectrum of clay types and their unique properties was the source of great delight for Walton as they described how searching for the clay, putting their hands in the earth, and deciding how to use it became a ritual. In getting closer to nature, Walton realized how mediated society’s relationship with the environment had become, via parks and other man-made interventions, especially for Black people. 

Terra is the next evolution of Walton’s conversation about nature and the body. Walton primes the audience for inception by staging the installation as a liminal space. Despite their individuality, the seven sculptures function as a unit. Each adds more context to the next, they vary in size, but nothing overwhelms. Colors, textures, and materials speak in spirited unison as the whispered thoughts of Walton’s titles become echoes of inquiry and challenge our understanding of natural order. 

Throughout the exhibition, the human form submits to the wild. With faces full of surrender, the body is abstracted in clay works like “Losing Form” 2024, and “What if I Told You Everything Was Connected” 2024, as limbs succumb to dirt and contort gracefully into branches. Truncation of the figure remains, though unlike “Body Stigma” the figures are of the earth instead of standing upon it. Absence becomes a naturally occurring phenomena. 

Walton continues to establish the primacy of nature in works like “The Land Remembers (floor installation)” 2024, and “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow” 2024, which lack any semblance of the body altogether. Rather, the bodies are organic, trees and plants that occupy much of the two-room gallery. These works also play on ideas of belonging by bringing the ever expansive into a confined space. Though it’s not uncommon to see ruins overtaken by flora, the way in which Walton centers them along with the rapid transition from the modernized first floor to the dilapidated second floor unsettle reality and our perception of what it means to be in or out of place. 

As I left the gallery, I wondered where nature fell on my hierarchy of needs and what it meant to spend a life trapped in performative ways of being. The layers encompassed by these questions are plentiful. Though, one must be aware to reconcile, and Terra creates the space for awakening. In Walton’s world, anomaly, difference, the seemingly out of place, are honored as naturally occurring realities equal to and part of the “norm.” 

Terra will be on view until December 15, 2024 at Swann House, 909 N Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21202

By appointment Tuesday – Friday, 2-4:30PM