Susan Carkeek

Susan Carkeek’s new series Dirt Plant Sky is an iterative portrait of what lies beneath the surface. Her inaugural piece in this body of work was featured in the 2023 de Young Open.

Paper clips, eggshells, bits of construction material and plastic, chunks of wood, pins, bones, Styrofoam, and packing material are buried in the dirt.  Shown as a cross-section, the artist is focused on the most recent layer of dirt-- ours-- recently laid down during the Anthropocene Era, the current period of time during which human activities have impacted the environment enough to constitute a distinct geological change.

There is an otherworldly color to this earth, glowing with chartreuse and chalky whites, like an imaginary Chernobyl that has survived the worst and is returning to life. The bluish layers at the very bottom suggest depleted groundwater now disrupted and somewhat replenished by our recent atmospheric river rainstorms.

Carkeek began this series during Covid shelter-in-place when social isolation led many of us to reevaluate our lives. The whimsical plants, flowers, and unloved weeds nourished by the tainted yet enriched soils sway in the breeze, emblematic of our collective fragile mental health exposed during the Pandemic years.   

Carkeek received her BA in art with honors from the University of Montana, Missoula. She held roles as a public school art instructor and nonprofit arts administrator for decades. She founded Fly on the Wall art school in Half Moon Bay in 1993 and operated it for nearly thirty years before retiring.