Between the Waters

In her ceramic works, Erin Jane Nelson memorializes barrier islands of the South Atlantic and Gulf coasts that will likely disappear with rising sea levels. Although they resemble travel keepsakes, Nelson’s ceramics subvert the souvenir and its connotations of leisure and escape. Drawing from vernacular Southern craft (such as sailor’s valentines and memory jugs), she reflects on how the changing climate has radically reshaped both the geography and the collective consciousness of these regions. Many of these nearly vanished sites have complicated legacies of colonialism, slavery, racism, environmental degradation, and militarism. “What are the monuments or memorials we are not able to see?” she asks. “What monuments are undoing themselves?”