My art reflects a concern with the environment. I am interested
in the representation of landscape as a record of human values and
actions imposed on the land over time.
The Western Industrialized Society's vision of nature was at once
materialistic and idealized. Historically, photographers who photographed
the West became the tour guides of its colonization. The photographers
played to a market bent upon consuming virgin land.
We continue to be attracted to the idea of a bucolic landscape.
Views into "nature", however, often provide a reflection
of ravaged rather than preserved land. Damaged land becomes equivalent
to a damaged spirit or psyche. Do we manage parklands to protect
them for or from ourselves?
The photographic images I create are a collaboration between the
natural environment, artifice temporarily planted in the landscape
(site specific sculpture built to be photographed), and the transformative
qualities inherent in the photograph.
The black and white images speak to the sometimes fatal intersection
of nature and culture. The animals are stand-ins for our relationship
to the environment. For instance, The astro turf cows consume the
landscape,(a golf course which itself consumes water in times of
draught, we consume the cow, and the bovine themselves provide a
pastoral scene or a consuming landscape.
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