At Terra Keck’s Spring Break Art Fair booth curated by Field Projects, titled “Out of Time,” visitors are drawn out of the fair’s colorful frenzied atmosphere into a dark, immersive space where the air is tinged with hickory and the walls are painted a deep bluish-green. Her sumptuously subtractive “eraser drawings” of graphite and watercolor float inches from the walls and are backlit by warm battery-powered lights. Gold sunburst motifs explode behind each work, evoking a blend of Christianity, pagan mysticism, and perhaps an H.R. Giger alien religion. Keck’s work explores the thresholds between realms, where light and darkness dance delicately. This is our conversation from the opening hours of Spring Break 2024.
Jan Dickey: Should we go into the dark room?
Terra Keck: Yes, would you like to go into the dark room together with me?
[Both walk into Terra Keck’s solo booth at the 2024 NYC Spring Break Art Fair, dimly lit as if for a seance]
JD: We’re here in Terra Keck’s art exhibition, in the heart of the Spring Break.
TK: In the heart?
JD: The beating heart of one of New York’s top festivals.
TK: Can you describe what you’re seeing, smelling, and tasting?
JD: I smell old hickory.
TK: Excellent nose, excellent sir. I set up a reed diffuser in here to add an immersive quality. The room feels a bit like a womb, so I thought the scent would catch people as they walked by. There’d be a, “(sniffs) ooh, ooh, yeah––nice.”
JD: It’s like a cabin in the woods.
TK: Yeah, that movie! Where all those people died. (laughs)
JD: So we’re in a dark room here. The walls are painted a dark bluish-green. There are several drawings on paper, mounted to panels, levitating about two inches from the wall––backlit by soft lighting. There’s also a sunburst motif in gold paint on the walls, which evokes Baroque churches, but also feels connected to pagan spirituality. Light seems to play a significant role in your work. Could you speak to your interest in light?
TK: Absolutely. Light has always been essential because I am interested in creating spaces, creating something beyond drawings––or whatever my object is. One of the easiest ways to tone a room is through light. Growing up, I lived next to my high school that had a planetarium in it, and my mom used to take me and my brother to shows there. The feel when the lights turn off, and there’s that glow––the tone of the room changes. It’s like a magic trick. I think I’ve been chasing that high ever since.
People often describe my work as really dark, and that it’s about darkness. But I’ve always thought it’s more like candlelight or starlight—pinpoints of light in the darkness. The stars as opposed to the night sky. The UFO flying through the sky, disrupting that black opaqueness.
JD: Your work often evokes imagery of extraterrestrials, with glowing lights in forests or objects emerging from the sky. What is your interest in other realms?
TK: In other realms? In veils and passing between them? (laughs) My background is in the occult, which has a rich history of trying to see beyond reality. Recently, that’s really metamorphosed into an interest in UFOs and consciousness studies. You and I, and everyone here at Spring Break, has our own bubble of reality. We rub up against and touch each other, and those intersections are really interesting to me. But there’s this “uber reality” that’s above us.
We only sense that uber reality in an indirect way, the same way we sense light––through the feeling of heat––getting sunburnt. Or, sometimes it hurts our eyes a little bit. It is physical and of the world, but it’s not quite there. We are always moving between these realms, but we don’t sense them in an ocular or physical way. Our perception of that other reality is often limited to subtle sensations, like getting the creeps, or walking into a room and knowing instinctively that two people were just fighting.
There are things that we interact with that we haven’t evolved to sense just yet, because they don’t appear on the familiar light waves. Or, they don’t appear the way a tiger appears in the jungle.
JD: There’s also a noticeable use of geometry and patterns in your work. I see these clover-like forms that remind me of stained glass windows or pagan designs from the British Isles. Could you talk about the role geometry plays in your art?
TK: I think of my drawings as vehicles that transport us to other places, much like a church or temple is a vehicle meant to transport us to something beyond––or to a greater understanding. Some people in the UFO space get really caught up in the nuts and bolts: “There’s this UFO, and it’s made of this, and there’s little guys in there that are up to stuff.” But I’m more interested in the idea of a craft as a thing that’s meant to hold a body, something that’s meant to protect you and take you elsewhere.
My interest in crisp lines, geometric spaces, and sunbursts comes from the way they can articulate otherness. Intuitively I understand that geometry is all around us, that it’s all math; but the geometric patterns feel otherworldly when they’re isolated. Mixing that geometry with natural floral forms, I think adds to that friction between the familiar and the alien. It’s like these forms exist both within and outside our world, hinting at realms that I’m just now becoming privy to.
People tend to dismiss floral patterns as decorative. But flowers, especially perennials, are tied to human ideas of value and memory. They live on after us—certain bulbs can last for hundreds of years. I’m fascinated by how flowers carry memories forward after we’re gone.
JD: Speaking of life cycles, there’s something almost evolutionary in your work, particularly I think about science fiction, like Octavia Butler’s Dawn where an alien species genetically combines its DNA with humans and basically coerces us into a coevolution. There’s a lot of apprehension right now about what the human species is going to look like, because of all the weird chemistry we’ve brought to the planet. Looking at your drawings, the concept of Gaia comes up for me, thinking about the planet as an organism that could transform from within or without. Are you thinking about evolution through your work?
TK: I really love the idea that the planet is an organism being acted upon, and I am interested in what you brought up about the way that we are acting upon our planet. However, I try to avoid framing it in a sinister light. While some UFO theories focus on fears of invasion or genetic manipulation, I believe that these external forces are part of something much larger than ourselves—something beyond human-centric fears.
JD: Got it. So, to summarize: Through your drawings you are searching for something beyond what we can see. For you, creation is a way of reaching for the unknown.
TK: Definitely. I start from a piece of paper completely blackened by graphite, and then I add a watercolor wash to create the tone. Then slowly I work to bring out the light, and that’s the step in the process that feels like I’m tapping into something beyond myself. I try not to have a clear idea of what I’m going to create beforehand, because then it becomes a product rather than an exploration. I feel like I’m communicating with some off-world entity; but not like I know their name, or where they’re from, or their planet. It’s more like I’m in tune with something else. They’re working through me and I’m a conduit. I don’t feel like I fully own the drawings once they’re done. That makes them more precious and holy and divine to me.
JD: It sounds like you’re relinquishing some authorship to whatever force you’re channeling. Does that allow you to distance yourself from the weight of responsibility for the work?
TK: When I let go of that control, the process feels more about openness and hope—counter to the hopelessness a lot of people are feeling right now.
JD: I get the sense that you’re tapping into something akin to medieval painters working for the church. They didn’t have to question the why—they knew they were creating for a divine purpose. Is that similar to what you’re experiencing? Are you trying to tap into that same feeling, but without the baggage of monotheism?
TK: Yeah, removing the why and just saying it’s a divine compulsion…
JD: You holy ****** ******.
TK: (laughs)…I’m a level 18 cleric performing my christly duty. But no, it does feel that way. It doesn’t even have to be me. If someone else made this, I would feel like, “yeah, you’re in touch with whatever I’m doing.” I see other work where I think that they’re talking to whatever I’m talking to. Or their buddy. Whatever I’m talking to and whatever they’re talking to, they go get drinks after work.
JD: Ok, well thank you very much, Terra Keck, for sharing these insights here in the beating. . . womb of Spring Break.
TK: Yeah, the pulsating womb. (laughs)
JD: The pulsating womb.
TK: Thanks. Thanks for coming.
