GARDEN MOOSE
Alaska Botanical Gardens Artist in Residence 2023 Garden Moose is a project to bring awareness to the close relationship between Alaskan residents and the Alaska Moose. In collaboration with the Alask Wildlife Center, I painted portraits of the moose that find sanctuary there. The paintings are installed in the wild pathways of the Alaska Botanical Gardens. To further support the project, I held a still life drawing session with Alaska Moose biofacts as well as invited staff from the AWCC to share information specific about Moose in the Anchorage area and best practices for cohabitation, especially gardening!
SILT
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With the support of the Anchorage Museum and Polar Lab Artist Residencey in Anchorage, Alaska, Silt is an exploration of Alaskan glacial silt from multiple views of relation. I was born and raised on the banks of the Nenana River before moving to Fairbanks. The river silt is one of my earliest memories of connecting to my environment. I remember the way it would transform my skin into a sparkling part of the river after covering my hands in it. Whenever I have the opportunity to return home, it is still a powerful signifier of the phenomenal place I am from. It is also a swift reminder of the personal, familial, and communal experiences growing up in Alaska that for me and many other Alaskans were powerful and sometimes very tragic. For the people who live there, the natural landscape and the people are inextricably linked, my aim was to approach silt from this perspective.
My process involved a full-body life cast of myself that I filled with silt. The figurative silt sculpture would then be placed where the silt was gathered from and documented as it became a transient, ephemeral part of the environment. As the sculpture is a life-casted replica of my body, visually, it was a vicarious experience of this transformation and relationship with the environment.
AN APOLOGY FOR TAXIDERMY
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An Apology for Taxidermy, which also includes pieces from Consider the Spoonbill, consists of 3d scans of taxidermied Roseate Spoonbill birds, as well as Egrets, from the LSU Nature Science Museum’s colletions. The aim of this project was to explore human’s complicated and precarious relationship with appreciating animals and wildlife, in particular as it is compounded by human destruction of habitat.
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With the support of the Anchorage Museum and Polar Lab Artist Residencey in Anchorage, Alaska, Silt is an exploration of Alaskan glacial silt from multiple views of relation. I was born and raised on the banks of the Nenana River before moving to Fairbanks. The river silt is one of my earliest memories of connecting to my environment. I remember the way it would transform my skin into a sparkling part of the river after covering my hands in it. Whenever I have the opportunity to return home, it is still a powerful signifier of the phenomenal place I am from. It is also a swift reminder of the personal, familial, and communal experiences growing up in Alaska that for me and many other Alaskans were powerful and sometimes very tragic. For the people who live there, the natural landscape and the people are inextricably linked, my aim was to approach silt from this perspective.
My process involved a full-body life cast of myself that I filled with silt. The figurative silt sculpture would then be placed where the silt was gathered from and documented as it became a transient, ephemeral part of the environment. As the sculpture is a life-casted replica of my body, visually, it was a vicarious experience of this transformation and relationship with the environment.
sample of silt materials https://vimeo.com/237832850
AN APOLOGY FOR TAXIDERMY
BED
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The bed is central to my MFA thesis Presence/Absence. With it I am interested in it’s visual language. It speaks directly of the body and of bodily experiences from the mundane to the profoundly affecting. It can evoke feelings of familiarity, rest, intimacy, memory, trauma, loss, isolation or death, among many other associations. In the lines made in the fabric a history of movement can be read.
The bed, in its immediate language, is a powerful relationship between the signifier and signified. With this in mind, I look at the dynamic of Presence / Absence and how the bed can simultaneously speak of the past and present, and of the impact of presence and absence.
The bed is central to my MFA thesis Presence/Absence. With it I am interested in it’s visual language. It speaks directly of the body and of bodily experiences from the mundane to the profoundly affecting. It can evoke feelings of familiarity, rest, intimacy, memory, trauma, loss, isolation or death, among many other associations. In the lines made in the fabric a history of movement can be read.
The bed, in its immediate language, is a powerful relationship between the signifier and signified. With this in mind, I look at the dynamic of Presence / Absence and how the bed can simultaneously speak of the past and present, and of the impact of presence and absence.