The Secret Language of the Forest (as written by the jewel beetle) is an eighty-eight-foot scroll made up of nineteen connected passages, created as a way of recording my time in the forest — walking, listening, slowing down, and paying attention. Working with ink, oil, mica, paper, and raw canvas, I approached the piece like a visual journal, allowing materials to build up slowly in response to what I was experiencing: shifting light through leaves, wind in the trees, insect paths, root systems, and quiet moments of stillness. The scroll format felt essential because it mirrors how memory moves — without clear beginnings or endings — unfolding as a continuous meditation rather than a fixed narrative.

The jewel beetle became both a symbolic guide and a quiet witness throughout the process. Its iridescent body and intricate trail systems felt like a form of writing across the landscape. What’s especially striking about the jewel beetle is that it embeds beneath the bark of a tree, slowly interrupting its ability to survive. That nearly invisible process became an important conceptual layer in the work — a reflection on how change, loss, and transformation often happen gradually and out of sight. Each section of the scroll acts like its own chapter, varying in tone and texture, mirroring the diversity and interconnectedness of the forest itself. Together they form what feels like a sacred recording — part observation, part prayer.

This piece took over six months to complete, and during that time a dear friend of mine was living with a terminal illness. That experience quietly shaped everything. There is an undercurrent of trying to hold time, to create space for this person through the act of making — of witnessing, grieving, and remembering. The scroll became a place to sit with that complexity, where life and decay, presence and absence, coexist. When installed, the work invites viewers to move alongside it, slowly and intentionally, offering not a single image but a procession of moments — an embodied record of landscape, memory, and the human desire to hold what is fleeting.