Does human touch affect location?  What kind of an imprint do we leave behind? There are obvious geopolitical implications: carbon footprints, the debris of our consumption, etc. But in addition there are concerns of mortality. What is left of a human life in the physical world that survives it? These questions have inspired a desire to ferret out the possible tactile impact of others who have frequented a site in the past.

Sited at Port Angles Fine Art Center, Trace, looks for natural points of impact on the property. The impact may have come from a need for support, balance, leverage, or perhaps just the impulse to touch. These points are demarcated with clay slip impressions made by touch and surrounded by locator map pins. Like insects on pins, these prints will be “held for research” until the natural course of weather and time erases the prints leaving only the indicator pins as a remnant. Trace brings attention to itself by virtue of occupying the spaces that are naturally reached for, thus requiring a modification of interaction with the trees of PAFAC’s Webster’s Woods.