Pipeline: Drawings and Practices of Pilgrimage is a series of 4ftx4ft colored pencil drawings on paper visualizing the invisible natural gas flowing through the recently implemented Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), a 300 mile long fracked natural gas project that cuts through the Appalachian Mountains where I live. Simultaneously, the drawings document interior movements of pilgrimage, a sacred journey of transformation rooted in place.

Each drawing starts with a fragment, ephemera from daily life: a piece of text, an observational
drawing, a doodle, a stain. With colored pencils I map out and develop the form through a
labor-intensive, meditative process that reveals cellular, micro-, macro-cosmic shapes that flow into
one another. I use a palette of yellow ochre, olive green, mahogany, tuscan red, cerulean, and indigo
blue, colors I associate with both the Greenbrier River (one of the largest MVP water crossings) and
the pipeline construction sites. Each drawing culminates in an organic form, scaled to roughly 42
inches, the circumference of the pipes used for MVP. My goal is to make 40 of these drawings, a
number often used in literature to signify a long, sacred journey. Through the repetition within these constraints of color palette, scale, and medium, I train myself to be aware of new possibilities and to delight in subtle variations that emerge; to stay awake to the harm caused by this extractive energy project and find ways to keep building communities that are grounded in care for creation.