Marley Massey Parsons
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Vegetation
Handmade paper consisting of compost *made to the space
2022
Artist Biography
Marley Massey Parsons (b.1998, Salisbury, MD) is a Philadelphia based multidisciplinary artist whose work advocates for acknowledging and unearthing the relationship between human and nonhuman worlds. Marley received a B.F.A in Painting and Printmaking from Salisbury University in 2019 and will earn an M.F.A from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2022. Her body of work is composed of place-based responses of cyclical processes, elementals and recordings of humans' interconnectivity with the environment using photography, painting, drawing, foraged matter from the earth, writing, and video. Marley’s work has been exhibited across Maryland and in Pennsylvania. In the Summer 2021, she was an artist-in-residence at Mass MoCA. She is currently a Visiting Artist Coordinator and Career Services Assistant at PAFA.
Artist Statement
My practice is rooted in the advocacy of acknowledging and observing the relationship between the human and nonhuman worlds. Exploring this theme stems from my upbringing on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Through the use of photography, painting, drawing, video, writing, and foraged earth matter such as scrap bark and rock pigment, I create place-based ecological studies that respond to cyclical processes and elementals such as the wind and the sun. My work ranges from archival gatherings, replications of colors and patterns found in nature, to outdoor works in conversation with the environment.
Each piece is a meditative contemplation of our connection to the earth. Drawings with the earth's pigments and plant dyes. Photographs of mingling pollution and plants advocate for respect, and the return of our once reciprocal relationship with the land. Handmade paper made of compost offer a shift in mindset, to present a way of living alongside and within the natural cycles, that stresses the balance required for the orchestration of life.
Ultimately, my work is a demonstration of learning about and collaborating with the land in order to teach future generations, and to remind the viewer that the root of humanity is in symbiosis with the environment. You could say these works are recordings of spaces that may one day cease to exist