Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s ever relevant text from 1962, which addresses our environmental actions and the ensuing consequences was the starting point for a number of my recent exhibitions, Distorted Senses of Proportion. “Future historians may well be amazed by our distorted sense of proportion. How could intelligent beings seek to control a few unwanted species by a method that contaminated the entire environment and brought the threat of disease and death even to their own kind?” (p.8)
My studio practice is centered on environmental concerns. Action and consequence are addressed through works focused on endemic versus nonnative flora and fauna, accumulations and tolerances, often through a holistic use of materials. Many of my earlier pieces addressed invasive species, particularly the ones we choose to introduce to our environments for their inherent beauty, ones that, as we look at their beauty in the present, pose a danger for the ecological balance of the future. Often we introduce these plants and animals without considering that with them come diseases, different life cycles and competitions, unique inherent relationships.
We unconsciously, and sometimes selectively so, live in the moment of beauty without considering the consequences in the future to both the micro and macro.
This portfolio of works is related to environmental conservation. Many of the pieces in the abbreviated portfolio are studies in water: the potential positive impact of restorative aquaculture, the bleaching of coral reefs, the garbage patches of the oceans, the accumulated pollution levels in sediment, the fossil evidence of long ago waters now desert. From the matte board of my drawings and collages to the archival foam of frustrules, these works are partially or wholly constructed from reclaimed materials, creating a recycling system where one does not exist.
