About Nearer Nature

In spring 2019 artist Malia Jensen placed six carved salt-lick sculptures in wild places across the state of Oregon. Over the next year, eighteen motion-triggered cameras monitored the sculptures and the surrounding landscape, recording not only wildlife but also the dissolution of the salt licks.

Working closely with a video editor, Jensen then assembled thousands of 30-second clips into the six-hour video, Worth Your Salt. Structured in a grid of continuously rotating sequential clips, the format approximates the ubiquitous monitoring of everyday human activity. 

Each salt sculpture represents a different part of the body: a Brancusi-esque head, a breast, two hands, a stack of doughnuts (the stomach), and a foot. Beginning with the egg-shaped head installed in the forested west edge of Portland, Jensen arrayed  the sculptures across the state, symbolically forming a reclining body: two hands reaching South and West towards the coast, and the foot stretching to the Eastern edge of the state.

As the surveillance concluded at each location, Jensen collected the deteriorated sculptures from their various sites, embracing the collaborative efforts of the animals and the corrosive effects of weather.  Working with master craftsman Michael Endo and the Yucca Valley Material Lab, Jensen then created an edition of the sculptures in kiln-cast glass. 

Nearer Nature is activated by community engagement. In 2019, a five-hour version of Jensen's video was installed in 12 public sites near the original surveillance locations: a feed store, grocery store, Oregon Health and Science University Hospital research facility, high school, tavern, and more. This gave Jensen's extended Oregonian neighbors the opportunity to insert nature into their daily rituals in new ways, facilitating conversations between strangers about the places where they live and encouraging them to slow down to better observe our world.

Nearer Nature and Worth Your Salt are intended as an armature for the complicated conversations the artist hopes we keep having, in person, face to face, disarmed by a common feeling for the beauty and importance of the natural world we share.