Eraser drawing, graphite, watercolour, coloured pencil and acrylic paint on BFK

8.5 × 11 in

2024

(@herlovelyface)

25% of all sales with be donated to Hawai’i Arts Alliance

Terra Keck is an image-maker and performer based in Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA from The University of Hawaii at Mana and her BFA from Ball State University. She co-hosts the comedy-educational podcast "Witch Yes!," and is a founding member of the international artist collective GRRIC. You will find her work featured in publications such as Hyperallergic, The Art Newspaper, and Oxford American Arts as well as in permanent institutional collections in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Hawaii, and California. Her work was recently featured in a solo exhibition at Spring Break Art Show curated by Field Projects and she will have her Mexico City debut this fall at Maia Contemporary Gallery.

Described by the editor-in-chief of Hyperallergic as "sonograms of a world ready to be born..and brimming the optimism of theosophical insight," Keck's work explores the ontology of our universe and consciousness through the metaphor of the UFO. Instead of siphoned through the language of militarism and conspiracy, the work approaches the UFO from the angle that our universe is, at its core, benevolent. The work is created by erasing layers of graphite and watercolor, a reductive process that alludes to the importance of what is left behind and the negative spaces in our cosmic story. Spiritually, the work is generated in response to the broad consensus that the future is canceled. When things feel so uncertain, what are earthlings supposed to do but look up and out at an opaque and glittering emptiness and dream of someone who traveled a thousand lightyears just to catch a glimpse of us?