My work deals with the cycle of stasis and decay played out between the surfaces of the built environment and the natural world which ceaselessly encroaches on that environment. The selection of work featured here focuses on one half of this cycle: that of nature denied by material.

In treating this theme of life cycles thwarted by the intrusion of built components, I have developed this body of work based on the seedpods from trees falling and rotting on urban surfaces. The work is concerned with our recognition of the importance of trees and other flora, to the point of artificially planting them within our constructed environments, and the fact that these trees are cut off from any ecosystem and bear no ecological resemblance to trees in nature. We appreciate these trees in an aesthetic fashion while paving the ground beneath them and truncating their lifecycles. This basic, fascinating problem provides the basis for this body of work.

The broader focus of this work is the detrimental progress of urbanization. The denial of nature is reinforced by all aspects of urban expansion, from sociopolitical to economic. But the exchange system that calls for bulldozing and flattening a wooded area in order to recreate hills and plant new trees before building tract houses is deeply problematic in basic psychological and social terms. This work seeks to question practices such as these as well as our own personal understanding of our place in the world around us.

study for renewal
emergence
underpinning
a framework
destination (thwarted)
fruition (denial)
(urban) artifact
sweetgum | bitumen
absorption/rejection study no.1
waste (purpose)
purpose (waste)
the qualities of a life fully lived (II)
the qualities of a life fully lived (III)
the qualities of a life fully lived (IV)