Without Care

Through craft practices of papermaking, quilting, and beadwork, Without Care meditates on the current ecological state of Superfund sites where minerals featured in the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) 2025 List of Critical Minerals have been extracted and processed. This federal list outlines minerals deemed vital for U.S. economic and national security. The recent expansion of this list brings with it a warning of a potential mining boom in the West. As this list slates minerals for future extraction, Without Care surveys a living archive of Critical Mineral operations in the Salt Lake region. With a focus on the Bingham Canyon Copper Mine and US Magnesium, artist Michelle Wentling sheds light on how economic and national security priorities shape land use in the West.

The artist begins each piece with a series of site visits––walking, drawing observations, and gathering plants from these disturbed landscapes. She then processes materials into handmade papers to piece into symbolic quilt forms that convey a feeling, an observation, or a lesson evoked by these sites. The exhibition title “Without Care” is a translation of the Latin root of “security.” Playing off this phrase, the artist engages slow, meticulous, careful material processes that contrast the land ethic witnessed at these sites. For Wentling, place-based craft practices carry the potential to steward both land and culture while offering an alternative to the domination mindset that inspires such mineral operations. As the Western U.S. sits at the precipice of a potential mining boom, Without Care asks us to reckon with ecosystems, communities, and knowledges broken and to reimagine what we might create amid our own ruins.