Geologic Metanoia: Material Domestication from the Awesome to the Mundane

For their 2023 Howland Travel Fellowship, UVA landscape architecture graduate students Sophie Maffie and Marissa Walrath traveled to public landscapes across the United States to document and investigate the transformative power of rocks. Going to places like Yosemite National Park, the Raymond Granite Quarry, and the West Elk Mountains of Colorado, the team questioned what is lost and gained through extracting, processing, transporting, and designing with geologic materials.

As a geological and social investigation, Geologic Metanoia embraces the active power of rocks to influence thought, action, and experience. The conflicting human relationship with rock, one that venerates them in one instance and ignores them in another, leads to a design process that relies on domestication. This exhibition dives into the concept of material domestication by hybridizing landscape architecture and earth science through the coupling of geospatial and cultural histories. 

Join Maffie and Walrath for the opening reception and an informal gallery talk on Monday, April 15 at 5 pm in Campbell Hall.

Supported by the Benjamin C. Howland endowment.