Artist Statement

“Regenerator is a concept that has been percolating in my consciousness for years, a guide to counteract the creeping despair and nihilism that comes with staring down climate chaos. All of us are searching for a way to live in a broken and calamitous future. Environmental degradation threatens our lives as it breaks down the living systems that sustain us. Our material culture and built environment–and the rampant resource extraction that they entail–alienate us from the sources of our sustenance. So to find hope, I look to the soil.

Soil is a living system. In the vastness of the cosmos, living systems are the only ones we know that have the capacity to regenerate. Seeds produce plants which produce flowers which produce more seeds. Forests cycle nutrients, capturing atmospherically available carbon using the energy of the sun. Tree roots supply that carbon to the soil in the form of sugars which nourish a vast network of soil microorganisms. In turn, the soil biology processes nutrients and makes the building blocks of plants available to root systems. Life animates itself from the lifeless elements of rocks, light, and air.

Science has revealed the workings of a delicately balanced system for creating order. The reductionist sees a simple scientific fact. The faithful see a miracle.

Systems which degrade life run counter to the inherent wisdom of the world to regenerate itself. Just as networks of living things support one another in the transcendent project of self-sustenance, so do we human beings engage in relationships with one another which nurture life. We nourish ourselves with the outpourings of our minds and souls. We sing, act, dance, and write. We theorize and test our theories. We fall in love. We laugh. We pray.

Despite the harshness of our mortality we exercise our unique capacities to engage one another and make meaning in an effort to make life worth living. In the end, our creation is our healing. So Regenerator–an effort that we are engaged in right now as I write and you read these words–represents a kind of biomimicry for the heart. As we cultivate the wellspring of our soul, we are pointed toward life.

-George Wilde, Regenerator