For Kent Cultural Alliance’s 2024 artist-in-residence, Austen Camille, the concept of “home” is shaped by their immediate surroundings—whether standing in a freshly plowed cornfield or beneath a dense forest canopy.
As Camille inhabits these spaces, her connection to the place unfolds not as mere observation but as active participation, an extension of the land’s intrinsic nature. Rather than viewing life through the detached lens of a journalist, she seeks the unifying threads that bind all living things within the intricate web of existence.
Camille’s work—whether writing, sculpture, or painting—emerges as a synthesis of the landscapes they encounter and the people they meet along the way.
“It comes out in paintings, drawings, it comes out in writing, most recently poetry and essays and prose, sculpture. I think for me, the primary reason that I focus on environment and ecology, is it really all comes back to this question of what is home and what does home mean? I spent my entire childhood moving around. I went to, you know, 20 schools or 22 schools and we moved homes constantly, even within the same town or the same city. And I’ve continued to do that as I move into adulthood. And I think all of my work, everything I make, is about this question around home and what it means to me? And sometimes I feel like the closest I get to an answer is, well, I can be up here in this region and I see a plant that I recognize and I know that plant from Texas. It’s a different species, maybe, but they’re in the same family. And that is a way to feel at home.”
As one of KCA’s first artists-in-residence, Camille was paired with Trey Hill, owner of Harborview Farm near Rock Hall. Through conversations with Hill and exposure to his innovative crop science techniques, Camille gained a new perspective on large-scale farming, which inspired her writing and painting for her first show at KCA. The new show, inspired by conversations with a range of land stewards and their diverse perspectives on soil!
Kent Cultural Alliance writes, “The exhibit O-Horizon is an unedited glimpse into the process of writing a book. Austen Camille is currently working on their first manuscript, a series of poems and essays about soil health, regenerative practices and rural culture. The writing is primarily inspired by a series of interviews that Camille has been conducting with land stewards located around the upper Eastern Shore.”
On Friday,February 7, from 5pm-8pm, Kent Cultural Alliance will host the new exhibit of her work, O-Horizon.
Artists’ Talk and Panel Discussion: Thursday, February 13, 2025 | 6pm
Exhibit Hours: Through March 16, 2025
Wednesday – Friday: 10am-4pm | Saturday: 10am-2pm
Camille’s work has been commissioned and exhibited in a diverse range of landscapes, from the dramatic northern Wyoming rivers to the high desert of eastern Oregon, from the rolling farmland in southern Wisconsin to the tidal estuary marshes along the Hudson River. Camille’s past projects include orchestrating an interdisciplinary conversation series across Temple University, creating and hosting a podcast called ‘Our Shared Field’ in order to bring artists into conversation with people from outside of the arts, and a collaboration between artists and oceanographers to undertake restoration work of cold water corals in the Gulf of Mexico.
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