Sedimented Histories

Sedimented Histories emerged from Maria Phillips’ enduring collaboration with artist Seth Papac, a relationship shaped over decades of shifting roles and deepening trust. Their shared history—woven from memory, material, and instinct—forms the strata beneath the exhibition. Together, they draw on the quiet force of sedimentation: how memory, time, and gesture accumulate, settle, and take form. The work unfolds gradually, shaped by conversation, instinct, and the slow layering of experience.

Phillips’ contribution centers on a transformation of waste into imagined geology. Drawing from her own discarded materials—household fragments, beach detritus, remnants gathered from daily life—she constructs “landfill minerals,” fictional formations that blur the boundary between artifact and refuse. These objects speak to the environmental afterlife of consumption and offer a kind of reverence for the overlooked. Her compositions echo natural processes—pressure, time, sediment—but remain deeply human. In them, the overlooked becomes luminous, and the everyday finds a second life in layered form.