I am a Brooklyn-based visual artist. My paintings and sculptures explore several environmental themes, albeit in a non-linear, poetic way. These include human interference with nature, spectacular natural phenomena, and my own relationship to the word landscape.
Currently I am focusing on two bodies of art. The first is a body of sculptures created with repurposed materials, primarily drinking straws, addressing the negative effects of plastics on our ecosystem. The second is a body of landscape paintings created from my emotional and physical perspective as a long distance thru-hiker.
In the first body of work, while mulling over the damaging effects of plastics and consumer culture on the natural landscape, I imagine the scientific production of a landscape. As an artist playing the role of scientist, in these sculptures, the mysterious lab samples explode into synthetic wonderlands composed not only of repurposed drinking straws, but also of miscellaneous debris, including pvc pipes and multi-colored wires. Electric colored drinking straws, when cut or linked together, suggest slime tubes, coral and honeycombs. While calling attention to the negative effects of plastics on our ecosystem, with references to nature, these lab-scapes are a play on production, reproduction, and the spirit of growth.
The second body of work is inspired by hiking the 2,650 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail in 2017 as well as hiking the 3,000 miles of the Continental Divide Trail in 2019. These regions, much like Von Humboldt’s explorations in the Americas, and my profound connection to them, are the source for the emotional, physical, and visual research component for my oil paintings.
As a long-distance hiker observing and living in the wild, remote, and changing landscape, I am attuned to nature and my place within it and hope that my paintings will reflect this rich connection. These series of paintings utilize the language of abstraction and representation in painting to narrate, honor, and illuminate my unique and contemporary perspective of the land I roamed. The resource imagery comes from photographs, memories, and sketches along the trails. Multiple perspectives in the paintings tragically hint - through depictions of meteorological phenomena, fires, fractured spaces, and voids - human impact on the natural world. However, other work, with contrasting suggestions of rainbows, beautiful light, and abundant flora, optimistically hint at the possibilities of renewal. In addition, much like thousands of people posting a photo on instagram of the same full moon from different perspectives, I paint specific events from not only my vantage point, but also from the imagined realities as seen from the mountains, trees, and wind. At times, in fact, I imagine, while painting, as I do when hiking, being the mountain I’m painting, or the wind that travels through it.