Abi Palmer Invents the Weather (Rain) is part of a series of four films where the artist processes her experience living with multiple chronic illnesses by foraging materials from local forests to create DIY performances staged for her cats. Bringing the weather inside, she breaks down the elements into seasonal “forest boxes” to reinvent encounters with autumn rain, winter fog, spring sunlight, and summer heat. In the video Rain, Palmer draws on her homebound methods to distill the smell of petrichor, the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil. She does this by soaking organic materials in rainwater under the Hunter’s Moon, letting them ferment in mason jars, and then straining the infused water through a makeshift cheesecloth “cloud” into a silver bowl. The latter step and crescendo of Palmer’s experiment is shown in the lightbox, a moment that magically diminishes our distance to the sky and natural world when confined indoors.

Watch all four films here!