In Fall 2018, our studio set on the Coosa River in Alabama, one of the most diverse waterways in North America, I focused my project on Lake Neely Henry hydroelectric dam, whose earthworks had flooded a former set of islands that housed the village of Otipaulin, once a critical navigational hub in pre-Colonial Alabama.
I came to realize that the geologic identities that brought the dam (deep limestone deposits) are the same that made the site a ford in the river and the islands home to a thriving village. This history now lies beneath the lake, my landworks intervention exploring the formal and geological language of fords and ridges, those of the Ridge & Valley region, those of 20th century infrastructure, and those of the Missippian cultures.