Pilgrims at the Creek

The opening chapter of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek features a memorable anecdote wherein a giant water bug (also known colloquially as a “toe-biter”) feeds gruesomely on a green frog, described by Annie Dillard with morbid fascination.
Pence is a water quality monitoring specialist and aquatic biologist with deep knowledge of, and appreciation for, insects and other often overlooked denizens of our local waterways. She feels that the linocut process, “with its brutal physicality – carving, gouging, reversing, inking” is a fitting medium for her subject and Dillard’s passage it references. “I’m reaching towards something more unsettling – the ecological truth that beauty and horror are intertwined.”