Nature & Culture
The following is a selection of works that explore the intersection of nature and culture: the relationship of humans to their material culture and to the natural world. I collect and use natural and manmade objects with a history, in which the processes of decay and use are evident, and which have been discarded or are considered ugly. I salvage and rehabilitate these materials in order to create something new that has never been seen. My objective is to transform everyday objects into works that go beyond themselves, in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and to bring out their inherent beauty.
The natural objects I use include wood collected from felled trees, hornet nests, leaves, soil, shed snake skins, and rocks. I am interested in creating works that act as mediators between the natural world and human culture. Many of these works blur the boundaries between them so that natural and man-made materials become a single new entity.
The first three works are part of a series of works that are nature/culture hybrids, in which I deliberately blurred the boundaries between human technology and nature, resulting in hybrid entities. I see these works as being mediators between nature and culture. In “Cowculator”, for example, there is a melding of animal and machine, in a vision of the world of the future, in which our technology will be more fundamentally based on biological structures and processes. “Madonna” is built from cactus bark and ribs and All Thorn bush; however, its insides are composed of a computer circuit board. “Computer” is a cactus/computer hybrid. |
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| Golden Oldies | |||
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| Treasure Chest | |||
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| Snarl & Slither | Vortex | Pearl Necklaces |