Jeff Wielki / The Reckoning / 3.26.2025 - 4.6.2025

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 1834 poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” Coleridge’s poem resonates with themes of human/environment conflicts. The Reckoning abstracts a moment in Coleridge’s work when deathly supernatural figures arrive to decide the fate of the Mariner and the ships crew after the Mariner kills one of God’s creatures. The Mariner must spend the rest of his days warning others of the wrongs he committed against nature.

My sculptural practice revolves around experimenting with thrown away objects and materials. I attempt to repurpose or recontextualize the discarded to examine how humans exist with and conflict with the forces of nature. Through The Reckoning, I reflect on whether human forces oppose nature, or whether the opposite of nature might be something else entirely, perhaps something supernatural.