At the Edge of Her Nature

Taft Gardens Residency, Ojai, CA

The principal fact is that the biosphere has existed throughout all geological periods from the most ancient indications of the Archean.

-Vladimire Vernadsky

This is a statistically incredible stretch of time for the conditions capable of supporting life to have remained fundamentally constant. What is this elan, gaia and geochemical riddle that only now begins to silently release her grasp? Figure, ground, the bones of any picture, more and more my eye goes straight to the background. I’m interested in the air around our moment in the sun. 

The drawings are made in graphite with laboriously blended layers of additive and subtractive work. The paper is then sliced in x or starburst patterns or repeated bands. The cuts appear subtle, precise and analytical. They are also perversely damaging and leave the support just barely intact. A field of negative space fills with the ephemeral qualities of our surroundings. Backlit variations emphasize the play of light and shadow and color. An outdoor installation explores the effect of a Sundowner wind moving through the strips of drawing. The Romantic skyscape cracks and billows in the same atmospheric forces we see referenced there. 

How do we represent nature? How do these representations conceptually separate nature and the human? How does this fantasy lay the groundwork for the intimate yet brutal physical reality playing out in the context of climate crisis? This work explores the intersection of abstraction and ecology on the quietly collapsing edge of a skyscape image and our far too limited understanding of what we still sentimentally call the natural world.