Artist Statement
My body of work addresses a prospective future in which human impacted species distribution leads to a vibrant, wonder-inducing and border-less landscape rather than an all-consuming homogenization. I am interested in understanding and reframing our beliefs about the way ecosystems interact with one another in the present and the future. Rather than stoking fear, or prodding at already exhausted environmental concern in my audience I present a more hopeful, possible outcome to human-caused planetary damage.
I bring this vision into the world through the manipulation of paper, ink, pencil and paint. My work references the historical precedents set down by the botanical illustrators of the past, with an important twist. The pieces I create are drawn, painted and then delicately cut out. They are then mounted on the wall, at various depths and heights, in order to create a three dimensional experience that allows a viewer great bodily interaction.
The arrangement of my work also allow for infinite variation. My installations are never the same from one showing to another They transform every time I mount the pins. This is due to the nature of the material, which often falls apart (and is then recycled/ repurposed into other projects), as well as to my own desire to embody change in my work.
In this version of the future, the lines between native and non-native species have dissolved. The planet has come to interact in a new, transformative way as the borders between ecosystems disappear and species move unimpeded from one area to another. They grow together, and mutate and transform one another producing strange and wonderful results.