Through a synthesis of rendered forms, preserved specimens, and archaic craft these drawings explore a terrain of personal psychic, emotional, and physical kinship with the workings of the natural world, suggesting cooperation and adaptation as a context for peaceful coexistence. They reflect on the paradoxical metaphysics of contemporary human societies: respect/humiliation, beauty/pain, love/fear, contentment/desire.

Made from inkjet-printed photography on fabric, hand embroidery, crochet and other needlework on silk, and life-size figure drawings of charcoal, pastel, gesso, and ink, my drawings express close interconnections between primordial and beautiful but often overlooked plant species—like lichens—and what their presence and proliferation can tell us about the environmental well-being of the places they are found, and the people that live there.

In human societies largely disassociated from meaningful communion with land, animals, plants, and natural systems, my work attempts to locate a link between knowledge of and sympathy with living nature, and the creation of interdependent human relationships characterized by patience, generosity, and respect. I’m intrigued by the ways in which nature serves as a locus for human ecology: how societies express, through their use and treatment of land, plants, and animals, crucial attitudes and valuations in cultural markers and materials such as food production and cooking, clothing, weaving and needlework, and rituals surrounding farming, hunting, and fishing. I strive to reveal intimate linkages between people and nature; how we as thinking animals are shaped and changed—emotionally, socially, and spiritually—by our interdependencies and interactions with the natural world of which we are an integral part.

Social, political, environmental, and ethnobotanical considerations as well as personal narratives underpin my artistic research, and first-hand experiences of place guide my work. From the northern forests and central plains of Minnesota where I was raised, to the verdant landscapes of Virginia where I’ve lived for many years, my creative work is infused with a sense of place and geography gleaned from my experiences.

My art practice is interdisciplinary and ranges widely across genres, forms, and processes; I’m most interested in testing diverse methods for giving passionate voice to environmentally attuned ideas and issues. My work across media—including drawing, artist books, documentary film, site-specific installation, and creative writing—exemplifies a deep and decades-long engagement with exploring crucial interactions between humans and natural ecology. The haptic possibilities of drawing, for example, make fragile native plants come to life on the page, asking the viewer to stretch and embrace intense relationships between people, plants, and animals. In my art and writing I’m compelled to share with my audience an abundant—even extravagant—intimacy with the natural world.