REBECCA SELLECK
some kind of bliss

How do we stop being human? I want to know what exists beyond the limits of my perception.

A long way from home, I slip away from routine. The plants are the same, but different. The rocks jut with unfamiliar strata and insects make homes in strange symbiosis. There are moments that feel like bliss, walking through special places, losing myself in things I find. Leaves, bark, seedpods, blossoms, strange growths on plants, rocks, shells and sticks. Each one is more than an object, its touch an exploration of biological and geological histories stretching back further than I can fathom and their surfaces layered with intricate ecological interactions. Each object opens a networked history through time in that space that I can try to understand, but that’s ultimately beyond my comprehension. When I hold each one against my chest, it feels like that beautiful complexity becomes part of me.

I want to share that: that moment of bliss. To express their value I’ve taken the ordinary and fleeting and made them golden. Now they speak human, but what’s been lost in translation? The moment has passed and the object a facsimile formed from surface indentations, with no atoms left of the original, becoming just a permanent reminder of the ephemeral. In trying to escape what feels human I ultimately do things that are so human.

These pieces are portals into the beautiful complexities that exist all around us and a weighted reminder that we can’t escape being human. We are just our perceptions. But sometimes that can be beautiful anyway.

- Rebecca Selleck, 2022