Kith and Kin
Coop Gallery, Nashville, TN
2025
Time lapse of quilt installation.
Kith and Kin is an installation-based exploration of family, death, connection, and impermanence, using soil collected from cemeteries and meaningful places tied to my ancestry. The title references an Old English phrase dating back to the 1300s referring to one’s connection to country both in terms of people (kin) and place (kith). The central element of the show, Soil Quilt (2025), embodies this idea. The piece is a recreation of a family quilt pattern composed of twenty-seven soil samples collected from family cemeteries where I have ancestors buried.
Soil is a bridge between the living and the dead, both in an ecological sense and a spiritual one. I work with soil collected from family cemeteries where my ancestors have been buried. The place where my maternal grandparents are buried is a tiny, side-of-the-road family cemetery in East Tennessee with deep red clay. I explore their loss in my work, and in the soil they’re buried in I found their presence. From there, I began to visit other family cemeteries to collect soil samples. The soils are the embodiment of my ancestors, relationships lived and remembered as well as historic and imagined. They are also connections to places created by those relationships.
The public was invited to view the installation of the quilt in the gallery and the deinstallation, during which the quilt was swept up into a single pile. The first Soil Quilt, created in 2023, was installed in the gallery in its swept-up state. The quilts were accompanied by photographs from cemetery sites, the names of direct ancestors who are buried at the sites, and portraits of each soil sample created using soil chromatography, a photographic process that is used to assess chemical and physical properties of soil.
This show would not have been possible without the help of numerous people. These include, but are not limited to:
My father, Randy Horick, for researching sites and accompanying and supporting me on trips to South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia.
My partner, Nasyr Bey, for driving me to sites in Tennessee and Mississippi, feeding me, and helping with construction and installation.
Kristi Hargrove, Barbara Yontz, Lisa Bachman Jones, and Maddy Ryan for advice, feedback, brainstorming, and installation help.
Thomas Sturgill for advice and help with planning and construction.
Bobby Becker and Katie Roland for help with installation.
Sam Angel for documenting the show.