For her Great Hall exhibition called “Drawn to the Edge” Holten created a series of large-scale drawings addressing her interest in the ever-evolving boundaries or “edges” between land and water. Having spent six weeks in New Orleans as part of A Studio in The Woods residency in early 2012, Holten’s drawings reflect her research on the Mississippi River and the wetlands along the southern coast of Louisiana. Tracing shifting paths of sediment, Holten’s drawings outline paths of water in a map-like fashion, while at the same time acknowledging the shifting nature of these maps due to climate change and land management decisions. The drawings are suspended from the ceiling of the Great Hall, manifesting Holten’s desire to translate two-dimensional drawings into a kind of three-dimensional sculpture. Holten is working with authors Rebecca Snedeker and Rebecca Solnit on drawings for their atlas project titled Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas. Holten looks to Solnit and Snedeker’s concept that “Places are leaky containers…Something is always coming from elsewhere, whether it’s wind, water, immigrants, trade goods, or ideas… Every place deserves an atlas.”

The Great Hall Project by Katie Holten will be on view at NOMA through September 9, 2012.