Habitat: A Personal Bestiary
2014
VALISE Gallery, Vashon, WA


Habitat is an aggregating site specific installation that grows and shifts with each iteration. I make observations on the valuation of life with specific inquiry into the humanist invention of a hierarchy of species. I focus on creating a spectrum of imagined, realistic and idealized relationships between species at both genetic profile and community levels. This body of work uses scale to emphasize the ignored and in some cases dissolves the taxonomic barriers between animals, plants and other organisms like fungi with reverence and humor.

Relinquishing frame altogether I mass these intricately painted and hand cut canvas layers on vertical and horizontal surfaces. I call this genre “accreting or aggregating painting” because at it’s basic level it consists of multiple paintings overlapping and relating directly to each other. I layer, hang and curve the paintings away from and back into the supporting surface. My work has been described as “…painting disguised as object” because the paintings are hand cut and consist of intricate networks which cast shadow and reflect color from the supporting surface causing them to straddle the realms of two and three dimensional works.