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 largely focuses on one half of this cycle: that of material corrupted by nature.

This investigation has emerged from my deep interest in material physicality. I was raised in economically depressed Michigan, among the decaying evidence of our nation's postindustrial consequences. A childhood spent among rusted farm equipment, decaying material, and run-down buildings together with a young adulthood in the grand urban abandonment of Detroit has resulted in a profound fascination with life cycles, ecology, and the passage of time.

This habit of close observation of urban decay and material corruption brought to light various sociocultural issues for me, especially during time spent living and traveling in developing countries. Over time I became concerned with the inequalities and injustices that often went hand in hand with the material character that most interested me.

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.

onan's legacy
rust portrait I
rust portrait II (seam)
the lifecycle of the urban hackberry
evidence
slab
sweetgum | bitumen
proposal for a personal icon
(empty) mouths to feed