In my work I examine how and where nature and built environments collide, merge, and overlap, sometimes becoming one and at other times remaining restlessly superimposed. My goal is to draw attention to the ways we perceive nature and to the differences and similarities between our experiences of the natural landscape and constructed environments. I am interested in how our relationships to these spaces change over time and how we might envision these environments in the not-so-distant future.

The landscape is in constant flux. It is something we are changing and disrupting in the pursuit of progress and ultimately transforming the picture of our future landscape into something profoundly different. In a city like Los Angeles, what is nature? Perhaps it’s cell phone towers disguised as trees. What is society’s idea of “green?” Is it about digging up hillsides and lining them with wind turbines in order to generate power for our cities? Or perhaps it’s about parks that are designed and built with turf instead of grass in order to conserve water. And what are the conditions that sustain life?

I am fascinated by the often confusing overlap between nature and artifice. It is within this interstice that my work exists. The space I construct through installation is similar to that of my mixed-media pieces: perspectives shift, scale is inconsistent, and pattern connects pictorial elements. I use styrofoam, sod, tarps, sand, tape, wire mesh, paper, vinyl, branches, plastic, traffic cones, and turf. The shapes, colors, and media are arranged in such a way to bring nature and artifice together like a neatly interlocking puzzle. It is meant to bring viewers into a fictitious world that is rooted in fantasy as well as reality, while also allowing them to recognize pieces of their own environments.

My focus on the future condition of our landscape derives from my interest in science fiction, specifically literature centered on the dystopic future city, and exhausted future landscapes. I am influenced by the short stories of J.G. Ballard because of the limitless possibilities they present. Ballard’s future landscapes are places where we are free to imagine various combinations of social structures, human relationships, lifestyles, planet conditions, technologies, nature (or its absence), architecture, landscape and so on. I appreciate the imagery that he presents because it demonstrates that what we understand nature to be is nothing like what it once was, and that this image will continue to change throughout time in ways that we can only imagine. Whether these narratives are looking at the past or the future, they are rooted in what is happening now.

My work is a place where these conflicts, struggles and overlaps are embraced, amplified, and organized. I use conflict to speak about nature and built environments, and how we experience them in relation to each other as well as to how we perceive the areas where they merge. Ultimately I am making spaces that I believe to be unattainable in the real world. Perhaps they are only attainable in my work.