Planetary

Planetary is a meditation on the natural world and its many complex ecologies. It is also a call to look more closely at ourselves–as individuals and as a collective– and in doing so, to understand that we are a part of nature, and nature is a part of us. The more we see this, the more we begin to appreciate our common ground. 

As a young child, I’d play in the woods, mashing berries and marveling at their colorful innards. The outdoors was a place of warmth and imagination, of light and joy and mystery. Later, as an adolescent, I’d go on to spend seven summers at a camp, living in a little cabin amongst the flora and the fauna that live in the streams and the woods. It was there that I learned to recognize the waxy leaves of wintergreen and the rounded fingers of the sassafras leaf, and to savor their tastes. I learned to look at the sky and name the constellations. And I learned that if you go outside and sit in absolute silence for long enough, you will notice that the birds begin to sing again. If you sit a bit longer, you will begin to notice more: the quiet humming of a bee, or the crawling of a mite on a log. And if you really study the woods, you will begin to see it not as a place, but as a collection of interconnected organisms and substrates. This series of mixed media abstract paintings and the accompanying supplemental material were created out of a strong  belief that to know the natural world more fully—as it relates to ourselves and to the rest of the world—is to become more a part of it. As you look and read through the collections, I hope you come away with a few new insights and a deeper feeling of connection to the world around you. 

In the interest of fostering a sustainable art practice, most of the pieces in this series were created using recycled materials or art supplies purchased in secondhand shops and creative reuse centers. I am especially grateful to The Scrappy Elephant (Charlottesville, VA), Scraplanta (Atlanta, GA), and Art Hive (Staunton, VA)  for the work that they do in helping to make the practice of art more sustainable and equitable, in more ways than one.