2020

a prayer for mother

An installation was displayed in studio 9.2 at San Francisco Art Institute between March 5th, 2020, and May 17th, 2020. The installation is composed of fallen branches, driftwood, stones, hemp cord, soil, arches oil paper, and a ziplock bag.

 The planet Earth is a complicated web of interdependent ecosystems. Suspended between two walls, the installation piece, a prayer for mother, occupies the studio as a sacred space, an altar, honoring mother earth. The installation is about the relationship between humanity and a world in which ‘nature’ has become a rarified resource.

Implicit in the tension between these natural objects, there is a notion of loss. The loss of the limb from the trunk of the tree. The loss of the branch from the forest where it grew and fell. The loss of the bark that shielded the softwood beneath. Conceptually the loss also continues outward, extending through the notion of interconnection, beyond the loss of limb and toward the loss of the tree. From the loss of trees to the loss of forests. 

The proposed limb’s experience of loss mimics a loss we imagine the planet feels when it loses biodiversity of any kind. Attributing the human feeling of loss to an object and further the planet, uses anthropomorphizing in a directed and conscious move promoting a broader definition of what is worthy of human consideration. 

The ziplock bag of soil serves as an obvious critique of plastic and pollution, but also it is a grounding, both figuratively and literally, of the entire piece in humanity. It is a comment on our inability to escape the anthropocentric lens. This act of grounding also pulls the sculpture downward, threatening to disrupt the entire structure’s balance, mimicking the way humans now threaten to disrupt the Earth’s complex and precariously balanced structure.

California Dream’n; Nux-Vomica Arctos

This 60” x 56” acrylic mixed media painting, is about the forced extinction and eradication of large-scale predators in the United States of America. The work centers around the California Grizzly bear, which was driven to extinction in the early 20th century. Poisons like Strychnine were used to effectively kill off all large predators in the US in the interest of agricultural development and westward expansion.

 The belief that westward expansion, was both justified and inevitable, termed, manifest destiny, motivated the meteoric rise of the United States of America. Historically, this rhetoric and view have been classified as a 19th century ideal, and most modern-day Americans recognize many of the deep problems associated with its historical implementation. California Dream’n, a proposed series, engages viewers in a conversation around the long-lasting effects manifest destiny produced; and how it continues to exist in the foundations of how Americans relate to the world- socially, economically, and environmentally. Nux-Vomica Arctos, specifically focuses on the relationship westward expansion has had to the bio-diversity of the American west. 

Nux-Vomica Arctos is the first piece in the series, California Dream’n; it is about the inhumane actions, cruelty, and irreparable damage that paved the way for the modern American West. The artwork centers around the history of baiting traps for predators with the East Indian poison, Strychnine. Targeting the large predators from the Great Plains to the Pacific Coast, the poison provided a safe, cheap, and efficient means of protecting the interests of agricultural developments. 

Baiting traps with strychnine was incredibly successful, playing a large role in the extinction of species such as the Californian Grizzly Bear and the Red Wolf; as well as severely thinning out of the American Gray Wolf populations. The poison causes an excruciating death, attacking the central nervous system until the lungs, exhausted from fits of extreme spasms and seizure, fail and cause the being to asphyxiate. 

Keeping this history in mind, Nux-Vomica Arctos, invites viewers to explore the irony and hypocrisy of California, adopting as their state animal, a bear who was driven to extinction due to the state’s creation. The California Grizzly was officially declared extinct in 1924 and was celebrated as California’s state animal thirty-one years after, in1953.

Love Letters to the Rainforest

A series of three paintings inviting a closer look at how humanity’s relationship with the natural world has shifted and what that means for the future of natural spaces. It focuses on depictions of temperate rainforests like The Hoh, and the Tongass National Forest, displaying them as pristinely imagined fantasies primed for commodification.