About Ruminant, mfa research project (2015-2017):
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Ruminant is one who ingests plant-based food only to regurgitate it and chew it over and over again. I begin by chewing on the word itself. Ruminant stems from the Latin rūmināre, which literally means to chew cud; a term that aptly describes the primary daily activity in which my small herd of dairy-cow-collaborators participate. Humans have adopted this word in verb form: to ruminate. To ruminate as humans means chewing our own cud, meditating on or thinking deeply about whatever it is we might chew and swallow.
​The Latin term rumen, meaning throat or gullet, is a site of interest as the throat is the source of language, generated by the vocal cords; tied up at the very top of our trachea. Human’s advanced and complex linguistic abilities have often been the source of division between us and other species, most who cannot respond in a human way. Ruminant flips the anthropomorphizing of animals onto its belly; humans adopted such a physical action into one of thinking. The work explores what it means to have kinship with a cow, to feel an affectionate bond with an individual animal and simultaneously rekindle a 10,000 year covenant of domestication. ​