Artist Statement
My work is optimistic as it sprawls across the walls in bursts of color, but the dense re-worked surfaces reveal my laughter at the difficulty of trying to understand something I don’t know.
I explore industrial landscapes that exist within the more complex natural world. A global freeway container shipping provides a keen barometer of where we are right now. The environmental impact of shipping such large quantities of goods through mega ports is huge. And yet creating my work from recycled product packaging that friends and family mail to me I have come to realize how attached I am to the highly designed packaged world that surrounds us. By bringing simulations of the often tucked away and ignored industrial shipping ports to viewers I hope they will have their own experience of the contemporary world. Mixing the loud positively aggressive language of our constantly advertised to existence with hand made obsessively observed landscapes I hope to provide the viewer a moment to themselves.
I focus on industrial landscapes because I care so much about the natural landscape and feel that our connection to it is crucial as human beings. I worry that the further we get into our technological thingies the more detached we become from the natural landscape and the less we care what happens to it and ourselves. Working in large shipping ports I have discovered something unexpected– birds, water and land reclaim the manufactured landscape. The over-powering strength of the natural landscape is not what I expected to find. In our highly designed culture even the “green” movement begins to feel programmed. Though I question our obsession with technology I myself make digital videos of container shipping ports which I later work from in my studio to piece together the landscape. This technology has allowed me to understand more fully the natural landscape that these industrial centers sit within as the subtle movement of the water, sky and trees reveal themselves in my videos.
In my life and work I find myself at a crossroads. After spending my adult life in cities I have recently moved from Manhattan to the rural area of Northern California where I grew up. Immersing myself in the “natural landscape” I find that what I considered natural is just a manipulated version of what came before. The layering of keeping a river the way it is now or the way it was over 100 years ago to protect endangered fish becomes very gray and hard to see through. After exploring the massive American shipping ports including: Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco I am planning a trip to visit and research the ports of Asia. Visiting Asia, key producer and shipper of products to the rest of the world, is vital to my understanding of the global issues involved in shipping. Blame is being placed on the East for environmental and human abuse, but the demand comes from this side of the world. As I begin to research these places and understand the reasons behind their massive investments in technology I grapple with trying to see the full picture of something without being in the place. Relying on the Internet and You Tube videos rather than my own eyes and digital recordings makes me aware of how we understand most things outside of the place we live through a barrage of media and information. I look forward to my assumptions being replaced by the complexities that exist in a place that is developing faster than anything we have ever seen before.
My work is optimistic as it sprawls across the walls in bursts of color, but the dense re-worked surfaces reveal my laughter at the difficulty of trying to understand something I don’t know.
I explore industrial landscapes that exist within the more complex natural world. A global freeway container shipping provides a keen barometer of where we are right now. The environmental impact of shipping such large quantities of goods through mega ports is huge. And yet creating my work from recycled product packaging that friends and family mail to me I have come to realize how attached I am to the highly designed packaged world that surrounds us. By bringing simulations of the often tucked away and ignored industrial shipping ports to viewers I hope they will have their own experience of the contemporary world. Mixing the loud positively aggressive language of our constantly advertised to existence with hand made obsessively observed landscapes I hope to provide the viewer a moment to themselves.
I focus on industrial landscapes because I care so much about the natural landscape and feel that our connection to it is crucial as human beings. I worry that the further we get into our technological thingies the more detached we become from the natural landscape and the less we care what happens to it and ourselves. Working in large shipping ports I have discovered something unexpected– birds, water and land reclaim the manufactured landscape. The over-powering strength of the natural landscape is not what I expected to find. In our highly designed culture even the “green” movement begins to feel programmed. Though I question our obsession with technology I myself make digital videos of container shipping ports which I later work from in my studio to piece together the landscape. This technology has allowed me to understand more fully the natural landscape that these industrial centers sit within as the subtle movement of the water, sky and trees reveal themselves in my videos.
In my life and work I find myself at a crossroads. After spending my adult life in cities I have recently moved from Manhattan to the rural area of Northern California where I grew up. Immersing myself in the “natural landscape” I find that what I considered natural is just a manipulated version of what came before. The layering of keeping a river the way it is now or the way it was over 100 years ago to protect endangered fish becomes very gray and hard to see through. After exploring the massive American shipping ports including: Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco I am planning a trip to visit and research the ports of Asia. Visiting Asia, key producer and shipper of products to the rest of the world, is vital to my understanding of the global issues involved in shipping. Blame is being placed on the East for environmental and human abuse, but the demand comes from this side of the world. As I begin to research these places and understand the reasons behind their massive investments in technology I grapple with trying to see the full picture of something without being in the place. Relying on the Internet and You Tube videos rather than my own eyes and digital recordings makes me aware of how we understand most things outside of the place we live through a barrage of media and information. I look forward to my assumptions being replaced by the complexities that exist in a place that is developing faster than anything we have ever seen before.
