Post Anthro: Leaning on Nature
Linking human and non-human life with ecology and the environment through art is the work I do. At issue are both human dependence on the natural environment and our exploitation of it. I seek to unground our sense of entitlement, security, knowledge, and futurity on earth. Working with multiple but related series, each examines the relationships between nature, culture, and technology. My focus is the Anthropocene-the age of mankind - and the false nature/culture dichotomy.
Post Anthro Series imagines the environmental/ecological collapse of our planet as we know it and creates possible futures where we, along with non-human species, have necessarily adapted and mutated in order to survive. Here, new hybrid species have evolved, along with their unique, elegiac structures for survival. Loss, extinction, and threat are the motivators for these domiciles which function as havens of practical protection as well as housing for decorative archives of relics from
disappeared species. Each of these series comes from my sense that at this precise moment, we are at the tipping point of a world gone wrong.
The installation Botanica absentia is a futuristic museum depository or memorial to lost tree species, set seventy years in the future after climate change has forced most living organisms, including humans, other animals, and plants, into either mutation or extinction. Seventy-two stainless steel tags --similar to dog tags or botanical garden markers-- are hung in a grid configuration reminiscent of grave markers. Embossed on each tag are both the common and botanical name of a currently endangered species of tree. These documentary objects serve as memento mori (Latin, remember death) warnings and elegy.
Suspended overhead, a massive, aluminum/chrome replica tree limb from the ‘now’ extinct Eastern redbud tree (Cercis canadensis) stretches across the black space. Facsimiles of its distinctive seed pods - replacements now fabricated from laser cut, dichroic Plexiglas - cover its lower surface. Clusters of pods appear mirrored, transparent, and iridescent simultaneously as they dangle and move, catching light and throwing spectral flashes of color everywhere. Nearby, a solitary image of the last remaining redbud tree is archived as a luminescent-dye print on aluminum. With a holographic vinyl floor directly below, this alluring space presents a disturbing future and somber question: do we have the potential to avoid this loss?
Studio Window: Disaster Series uses a vivid graphics/painting remix to show scenes of destruction by nature propelled by climate change. Lightening, floods, tornados, fires, and tsunamis are among the disasters viewed metaphorically through my studio window, with insects as the ultimate sole survivors, bridging exterior and interior spaces.
Surveillance Series looks at our enmeshed state of nature and technology. Drawings, video, and mixed-media works merge and tangle the apparatus of surveillance within the landscape.
The Space Between Series questions our vision of nature, now that we experience it primarily through a digital filter, with a 32-foot-long installation of round, mixed-media images.
Overall, my research speculates and questions human survival, as it couples with an experimental creative practice.
Linking human and non-human life with ecology and the environment through art is the work I do. At issue are both human dependence on the natural environment and our exploitation of it. I seek to unground our sense of entitlement, security, knowledge, and futurity on earth. Working with multiple but related series, each examines the relationships between nature, culture, and technology. My focus is the Anthropocene-the age of mankind - and the false nature/culture dichotomy.
Post Anthro Series imagines the environmental/ecological collapse of our planet as we know it and creates possible futures where we, along with non-human species, have necessarily adapted and mutated in order to survive. Here, new hybrid species have evolved, along with their unique, elegiac structures for survival. Loss, extinction, and threat are the motivators for these domiciles which function as havens of practical protection as well as housing for decorative archives of relics from
disappeared species. Each of these series comes from my sense that at this precise moment, we are at the tipping point of a world gone wrong.
The installation Botanica absentia is a futuristic museum depository or memorial to lost tree species, set seventy years in the future after climate change has forced most living organisms, including humans, other animals, and plants, into either mutation or extinction. Seventy-two stainless steel tags --similar to dog tags or botanical garden markers-- are hung in a grid configuration reminiscent of grave markers. Embossed on each tag are both the common and botanical name of a currently endangered species of tree. These documentary objects serve as memento mori (Latin, remember death) warnings and elegy.
Suspended overhead, a massive, aluminum/chrome replica tree limb from the ‘now’ extinct Eastern redbud tree (Cercis canadensis) stretches across the black space. Facsimiles of its distinctive seed pods - replacements now fabricated from laser cut, dichroic Plexiglas - cover its lower surface. Clusters of pods appear mirrored, transparent, and iridescent simultaneously as they dangle and move, catching light and throwing spectral flashes of color everywhere. Nearby, a solitary image of the last remaining redbud tree is archived as a luminescent-dye print on aluminum. With a holographic vinyl floor directly below, this alluring space presents a disturbing future and somber question: do we have the potential to avoid this loss?
Studio Window: Disaster Series uses a vivid graphics/painting remix to show scenes of destruction by nature propelled by climate change. Lightening, floods, tornados, fires, and tsunamis are among the disasters viewed metaphorically through my studio window, with insects as the ultimate sole survivors, bridging exterior and interior spaces.
Surveillance Series looks at our enmeshed state of nature and technology. Drawings, video, and mixed-media works merge and tangle the apparatus of surveillance within the landscape.
The Space Between Series questions our vision of nature, now that we experience it primarily through a digital filter, with a 32-foot-long installation of round, mixed-media images.
Overall, my research speculates and questions human survival, as it couples with an experimental creative practice.
