My work considers the complicated relationship between people and nature. My research begins by collecting found natural objects on daily walks. It is followed by documentation, organization, and finally implementation of the collected archive. While collecting, exploring, and creating, I encounter my own vitiation in nature. This leads me to nurture what is around me and long for what we have lost. My feelings of anemoia extend to nature that I have not encountered - extinct animals, undiscovered wildlife, and habitats that natural disasters absorb. The archive has a life of its own. It is constantly growing, shrinking, and transforming with each discovery and application to the creative process. It leads me to question people’s interference in and mediation of our environments.
The items that I have collected are scanned and presented as artifacts stripped of context. I have ordered them in a way that makes sense to me, but still compels the viewer to search for their own organized logic. These same images are digitally manipulated and layered to create collages. The collages are my recognition of loss. The loss in nature can be caused by habitat destruction, pollution, the introduction of invasive species, or climate change. In this same ephemeral way, I also project the images onto a display of ceramic vessels and ceramic florals. The projected image is one of nostalgia, like home videos of forgotten experiences, it is something that has happened, a memory, the past. They play to a silent space as if the media is there for no one and will go on even without human presence. I have chosen a still life to project onto, an artificial beauty that is void of life. The viewer is compelled to look closer at the natural image projection, but simultaneously their bodies block the projection. It is the embodiment of human interference while inhabiting a visual ecosystem.
My work, is influenced by the Dutch Vanitas paintings from the mid-1600’s. These paintings were an ordered and controlled use of nature that were meant to convey a message to the viewer. The message was that “life is transient” and the meaning of Vanitas is “in vain”. I have also been influenced by photos of natural disasters, the writings of Jean Baudrillard and William Cronon, walks on a nature trail near my house, and travel.
The items that I have collected are scanned and presented as artifacts stripped of context. I have ordered them in a way that makes sense to me, but still compels the viewer to search for their own organized logic. These same images are digitally manipulated and layered to create collages. The collages are my recognition of loss. The loss in nature can be caused by habitat destruction, pollution, the introduction of invasive species, or climate change. In this same ephemeral way, I also project the images onto a display of ceramic vessels and ceramic florals. The projected image is one of nostalgia, like home videos of forgotten experiences, it is something that has happened, a memory, the past. They play to a silent space as if the media is there for no one and will go on even without human presence. I have chosen a still life to project onto, an artificial beauty that is void of life. The viewer is compelled to look closer at the natural image projection, but simultaneously their bodies block the projection. It is the embodiment of human interference while inhabiting a visual ecosystem.
My work, is influenced by the Dutch Vanitas paintings from the mid-1600’s. These paintings were an ordered and controlled use of nature that were meant to convey a message to the viewer. The message was that “life is transient” and the meaning of Vanitas is “in vain”. I have also been influenced by photos of natural disasters, the writings of Jean Baudrillard and William Cronon, walks on a nature trail near my house, and travel.