by Camille Beasley
Feeding (cover)
Pitcher plants are carnivorous, trapping organisms inside and slowly digesting them. They live in some of the most beautiful ecosystems of the Southeast, and are beautiful themselves. Florida is a pitcher plant. Beautiful things drew me in and kept me there, until I slowly realized the mounting danger of staying. Though I think I’ve escaped, Florida continues to eat at me, in good ways and bad. I am also a pitcher plant. I take in all that Seattle has to offer, slowly incorporating it, feeding, thriving. Perhaps the city feeds on me, too; I’d like to think our interaction is mutualistic. I am consumer and consumed, cycling nutrients across space and time.
Thrush and Fern
The Swainson’s thrush was what brought me to the PNW for the first time – I got a summer job in college as a field technician for an Oregon State study on these birds. In the years after, I felt a lot of nostalgia for their habitat, with all of its Douglas firs and sword ferns. Though I eventually ended up in Washington instead of Oregon, I wanted to commemorate the bird that was partly responsible for that choice, with a reimagining of colors, obviously. This piece could also be interpreted as a wood thrush and a Christmas fern, two species that give me a lot of nostalgia for the southern Appalachian mountains. So this piece encapsulates things I love on both coasts while celebrating the queerness I discovered in the time between first visiting and moving to the PNW.
Camille (she/her) moved to Seattle recently after spending the majority of her life in the Southeast. She adores nature and tends to make it the subject of her art, although she often likes to add surreal twists.