Encaustic on Wood

19H" x 5.5W" 5D"

2026

These works are built from salvaged orchard wood gathered in the region now known as Silicon Valley, once called the Valley of Heart’s Delight. The wood bears the weight of time—weathered, worn, and marked by a landscape that has largely vanished.

Over these surfaces, encaustic wax is layered in quiet accretions, a process that echoes the slow gathering of salt, sand, and memory along the California coast. Each layer settles like a tide, building a surface that is both luminous and obscured, holding traces of what came before.

The work moves between two geographies: orchard and ocean, cultivation and erosion. In their meeting, the pieces become vessels of remembrance—where land, labor, and water converge, and where the past continues to surface through material.

-Lisa Moriarty