The Soft Encroachment

The Soft Encroachment by Ian Welch spreads awareness and creates a dialog concerning several acts linked directly to South Carolina’s history and future: logging and land development. As we are currently experiencing human altering climate change and a rollback of freedoms and protections in our communities, this exhibition hopes to engage in dialog surrounding opportunities for empathy and building of community through discussion.

The work evokes the slow ways in which boundaries—both physical and ethical—are redrawn. Nature, in Welch’s vision, is resilient but not untouched. It pushes back, reclaims, resettles, even as it bears the weight of our incursions.

The Soft Encroachment invites viewers to pause at the edge, to witness the quiet tension of coexistence, and to reconsider the cost of even our gentlest footprints.Many works include inks, fiber materials from handmade paper and other elements culled directly from the spaces documented in the work.