Bracing the Winds Together

Casandra Jacobs, Bracing the Winds Together, Cyanotype, 26 x 26cm, Ed 1 of 1, 2025, Framed

This past year, I have used nature as my quiet archivist — holding memory in the curve of a leaf, the weight of a season, the shadow of light against form. Each cyanotype became a trace of where I’ve been, physically and emotionally, a conversation between sun, time, and what is left behind when I visit the forests. We mark our years in seasons and symbols — the turning of leaves, the shedding of skins, the quiet passing from one self into another. This is the year of the snake, a year of release and renewal, a cycle we inhabit, constantly becoming and unbecoming.

Each cyanotype begins as an act of devotion: collecting, walking, and making. In these moments, nature becomes both my companion and my witness,  reflecting my relationships with others and with myself. The blueprints that emerge are not just images, but emotional imprints; quiet testaments to what was carried, what was let go, and what remained. The marks I have chosen to keep.

Bracing the Winds Together, Autumn of the Snake, and The Memory of You map the tender geography of transformation — how love, loss, and time press themselves into us like sunlight on paper. Through this process, I have learned that self-love can be as simple as a walk, as sacred as a breath, and as lasting as a mark left by light, love or loss.

“In the seasons that I got to have you,

I learned how skin remembers,

even after shedding.

We braced the winds together,

made our marks,

shared the hush between suns and the weight of the shadows,
and now,
I walk on with the memory of you,
pressed softly against the blue of my days.” – Casandra Jacobs, The Marks I Choose to Keep.