Rosemary Hall
Featured: May 30th, 2025
My projects often begin with something I notice while walking. These observations begin to circulate and take shape, gradually forming what I think of as a search image. This is the moment when I not only see something new, but begin to recognize it everywhere. The search image becomes a kind of condensation point, where ideas, materials, processes, and experiences gather and begin to take form.
The body of work that emerges is like a droplet: temporary, held together by a moment of clarity. But just like a droplet, it can evaporate, shift, and become something else. The beginnings, endings, and progression of my work are fluid~more like transitions than fixed points.
Exhibiting offers a momentary pause in this ongoing cycle. It’s a chance to step back and see what has gathered before the work returns to the studio, ready to disperse, re-form, and begin again.
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A recent search image has been spider webs and their role in collecting what's known in science as occult precipitation. This term refers to water inputs into ecosystems that don’t fall as traditional rain. It is water sources like fog, dew, and cloud condensation…forms of moisture that gather on surfaces and turn into droplets.
What I love about this concept is how the word occult often associated with the mysterious, hidden, or supernatural, gets applied to something as tangible and observable as water. There's something magical in noticing the subtle, often invisible processes that sustain life. It reminds me that even the most ordinary parts of nature can be vessels for the unseen and the extraordinary, if we just pay close enough attention.
Dewing ~ Doing
The world often reveals itself
at these condensation points~
moments or places where a shift occurs,
where boundaries soften,
and something unseen takes form.
Where many things coalesce
into a new, composite being.
A bead of water appears
on a thread of silk.
A thought surfaces
from the unconscious.
A trace of animal drama
appears in the material landscape.
A movement emerges
out of chaos.
These are the sites of transition:
between vapor and liquid,
absence and presence,
potential and action.
between substance
They are rarely loud.
Often obscure,
small, easy to miss.
A shimmer, a shift,
a breath on the surface of things.
The spider’s web is one such site.
Built to be nearly invisible,
it becomes visible
through what it gathers:
mist, pollen, fly corpses,
the smallest particles
of life’s drifting DNA.
It captures what the eye
might otherwise miss~
creates a temporary meeting,
a condensation point.
The droplets fall
evaporate
The web breaks,
weathers, disappears.
But for a moment,
everything gathers:
structure, atmosphere, motion, attention.
And in that alignment,
worlds and possibilities
become legible.
These points don’t offer permanence.
But they offer some clarity~
a flash of understanding,
many worlds seen at once
tied together with interlocking thread
A world turned upside down
in a droplet.
A new perspective
A glimpse of connection.
How the invisible leaves its mark,
and the visible fades
as the world
keeps dewing it.
