Remembrance
Wood, metal, books, furnishings
144” L x 120” W x 120” H
2019
Remembrance uses storytelling strategies to explore how personal narrative may be a tool through which to communicate about and understand human experiences. A book and reading room tell my narratives and allow space for vulnerability. The uncertainty, fluidity, and flux of memory become a signifier of our humanity as we struggle with hardship and search for connection to place and the people we love.
A soft knocking
Artist book with handmade grass cover paper
11” L x 5.25” W x 8.25” H
2019
A soft knocking explores how personal narrative helps us to understand human experiences such as memory and mortality. The work investigates how the uncertainty, fluidity, and flux of memory become a signifier of our humanity as we struggle with hardship and search for connection to place and the people we love.
Between the Cracks
Wheat grass, dirt, cement blocks, grow lights
144” L x 8” W x 36” H
2019
Looking to the places where natural and manmade landscapes meet and converge, Between the Cracks seeks to question relationships between nature and artificiality.
A Wild Disconnect
Wildflower species, cedar picket fences, grow lights, dirt
48.5” L x 24” W x 199” H
2018
A Wild Disconnect examines the growing disconnect between ourselves, our land and our community. As a living piece, it questions our desire to cultivate forms of maintained wilderness in domestic spaces.
If I can help the daisies grow that make another Robin smile, then let it be and let life do, for I will already be gone.
Installation at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, OR
Body mold and dirt
Dimensions variable
2018
If I can help the daisies grow seeks to draw connections between ourselves and the natural processes that all living things endure. Contemplating the after-death rituals we perform as forms of respect but also as mechanisms of healing, this installation unravels my own discomfort and uncertainty with thinking about what will happen to my body after I pass. By acknowledging myself within the natural cycle of life, I hope to bring a sense of acceptance into the uncertain waters of grief.
Once we were native, then we were foreign, now we are none. series
Cyanotype paper toned with coffee, audio
14” L x 10” W
2018
Once we were native honors native Hawaiian ecosystems as they are displaced by industrial agriculture. The print series draws upon my field investigations and ecological notes taken while working with the Division of Forestry and Wildlife. Blurring the lines between creative practice and research, image and text operate on the intersection of culture and nature, communicating a sense of instability, memory and nostalgia.
The Little Book of Country
Glass terrariums, image transfer on wood, moss, lichen, rocks
60” L x 30" W x 10.5" H
2017
The Little Book of Country is an interactive installation of terrariums holding self-portraits in the imaginative world I created at age seven after my father’s death. A narration of “The Little Book of Country” plays aloud where I read chapters from a book my father wrote for me as an infant, taking me on a journey through the country and what country is and can mean, divulging secrets, humor, love and wisdom along the way. The work mediates between the imagined and the real and explores themes of escapism, mortality, and a subconscious desire to return to and relish in a childhood cut short by death of a parent.
Arboreal
Acrylic photo transfers on plaster
24” W x 114” H
2017
Arboreal is a series of sculptures that explore the biological and geographical, culminating in a merging and blurring of the two. The work brings together separate yet intricately connected realms: the human (and human-made) and the natural environment. Human and terrestrial characteristics coalesce where skin becomes bark and identities merge and blur. Arboreal explores themes of connectivity that live beneath complex layers that tie humans to the land.
