Emprunt

My path becomes clearer as I move toward what nourishes me. After I’ve passed through, the world contains something more than before. Artist’s note: For the black bear, food truly charts the course. Depending on what’s available, it adjusts its movements and sometimes travels greater distances to find what it needs. By eating fruit, it also carries its seeds farther. It acts first and foremost to meet its own needs, without seeking to enrich its surroundings, and yet what gives it direction extends beyond itself. It was the gap between what it pursues and what its passage produces that led me to the title *Emprunt*. For me, the work has become a pivotal piece in *Héritage* because it connects to the idea at the root of the entire series: A life never begins at zero. Something is already there—received, found, or passed down—that transforms and leaves behind a trace that extends further than what set it in motion.