Artist Statement:
At its core, my genetic-based work is an exploration of how science filters our cultural understanding of nature. Through the lens of personal experience I find myself reexamining a familiar dialectic between nature and culture but from a contemporary context. Genetics is particularly well suited to this pursuit since its research generates palpable implications for us at both the individual and cultural levels.
Pear Tree Compositions is a series that utilizes dried and pressed leaves from a commercially available fruiting pear tree that I bought for an associated project called What We Do To Nature in 2014. These leaves all came from a single plant and these works reflect on the complexity, beauty, and sophistication of DNA, the memory recording system that perpetuates all life on earth. Using playful shapes and arrangements, the series considers different aspects of how human's ability to decode life at the DNA level has changed our notions of nature, the origions of life and our power to manipulate the forms future life might take.
1. Circling In, 2015, Archival Inkjet Print, 31” x 31”
2. Codex, 2015, Archival Inkjet Print, 31” x 31”
3. Falling, Failing, Decode, 2015, Archival Inkjet Print, 27" x 36”
4. Origins, 2015, Archival Inkjet Print, 28" x 36”
5. Ode to Pollinators, 2016, Archival Inkjet Print, 46" x 16”
6. Ode to Pollinators, detail