Artist Statement
For over a decade I centered my practice on exploring and investigating our world through the lenses of landscape and the environment. I continually return to the relationship between how we define place and how it defines us. In the past I’ve used terms like, “nature” or “natural landscape” which I have found to be inherently problematic and biased. Our understanding of and relationship to nature is more a product of our cultural and personal values than of an external physical reality. Reality in nature is not just what we see, but what we have learned to see. Recently, I have become fascinated with how we define “wild” spaces and contrast them with the built environments we inhabit. Our perceptions of nature and landscape have shaped the ways in which our society views our relationship to our surroundings, the place of people in the landscape, and our part in it.
Though my research and works I challenge our preconceived notions of place and our role in the world. I do not see us as separate from our surroundings but as a part of them. The landscape is a repository of human experience and events, physical and ethereal, tangible and intangible, making it so we can not separate ourselves from it. By understanding what shapes our perception of contemporary surroundings we will better understand ourselves, our connection to each other, and how we impact our world.
