Molly Tucker's Projects

BFA Student

Major: Photography

Graduation Year: 2019

Artist Statement:

I propose questions centered around environmental and ecological issues of mineral extraction, exploitation, and exhaustion by human standards. I am interested in the intersection between the geologic and the photographic, the experience of the mine and the mined. I investigate that which has been regarded as “expired” by society's standards. I examine the remnants of what is left behind or cast aside as unworthy while consumer capitalism is in search of new terrain to exploit. I make recordings and documents of the transformation occurring above, on and below the surface of the Earth. The result, a metaphysical study and inquiry of the object oriented ontology of the geologic through the medium of photography. I challenge anthropocentric thinking for a greater ecocentric perception of the world; I explore human demands of mineral and ores, our interdependent relationship with their chemical compounds, and the adapted survival & transformative perseverance of the mineral kingdom.

Biography:

Molly Tucker is an ecological artist and amateur geologist currently residing in Portland, Maine. She is set to receive her BFA in photography from Maine College of Art in 2019. Tucker’s love for the geologic stems from a long history of exploration in the 6.6 million acres of the Adirondack Park in upstate New York. The combination of geological anomalies in the Adirondacks and ancient fault lines allowing the currents of mineral waters to flow under the small city of Saratoga Springs, New York has fostered her artistic practice from the ground up. Watching mineral springs run dry and stumbling upon abandoned mines such as Tahawas at a younger age, sparked questions of mineral extraction, exhaustion and desertion of a site for new prospects to exploit. Tucker’s book In Her Womb lives in the library collection at the Burren College of Art; her series Re-crystallizations of Bygone Landscapes is featured on The Earth Issue’s online web gallery; an article written by Tucker is featured in 3rd print issue Manifesto The Earth Issue 003.