Conditions for Life

This body of work explores the intersection of abstraction and ecology. A tension between atmosphere and weight is a recurring theme. Air as the material of climate crisis. Air as image, as context, and the bewildering element that so delicately holds the space between any form and the wider world. In the series Conditions for Life, I am drawing Romantic skyscapes in graphite pencil on slabs of alabaster from the Mojave desert. The object conflates the below and above planes that encompass life on Earth. Strung from a wire, embedded with geologic time and weight, the rock support makes the image of sky feel impossibly heavy, both ready to crash to the ground at any minute or turn in a breath of air. Vital Materialism chronicles the wind billowing in and out of strips of a photograph of the sky like a broken sail. The image is both deformed and reformed by the atmosphere it references. The grid installation emphasizes both the infinite variability in energy, timing, and the direction of air currents, as well as the steady fade of evening light into night. Its title draws on philosopher Jane Bennett’s idea that matter shows “resistance, the force of life, and even a kind of will.” In Rock on Rock, I am photographing of a slab of sandstone resting against a lcd screen projecting an image of the interior of a cave. A mimicry of pixels glows beneath the prehistoric surface as the digital and physical world conflate in our eye but also resist each other in a material sense. Touched Day documents the objects I’ve reached for, and held in my hand, and let go over the course of a day. Grapes, meat, velvet, mulch, tools, chemicals, cleaners, a silver spoon and plastic scrubbers, the ever present creep of cords, batteries and digital devices, the wild diversity of a typical encounter with the physical world and my ostensibly inanimate surroundings. Everything is photographed in the air, entropy looms, and the blue print suggests an ominously submerged final resting state.