I work at the interface of chaos and control. I make gardens and landscapes, both real and imaginary. I am a visual artist and a landscape architect.
Making a garden is the process of imposing order onto a seemingly chaotic, incomprehensible natural and social environment. It is this struggle between order and chaos that creates beauty, new ideas, deeper understanding and repose but also discordance, ambiguity, turbulence and ugliness.
My work begins with a study of gardens and landscapes. I revel in the collision of the exuberance and complexity of disorder with the struggle to create structure and comprehension. I am interested in how places are defined through their presence (how they are defined or marked), through narrative (their stories, histories and interpretations) and through context (how they fit into the bigger world).
My current work spans many scales and mediums. My paintings / constructions are landscapes from multiple perspectives, most often an aerial view. They are intended to be difficult to take in all at once. The viewer is compelled to look at them at various distances and angles. As the light changes, so do the shadows and colors of the compositions.
I also create large temporary site specific works in rural pastures and on urban lawns and athletic fields. Like all my work, these are intended to be viewed from multiple perspectives—from space and ground level. Time and weather act on the pieces which means they are viewed from multiple temporal perspectives as well. For these larger works I use plywood, stencils, flowers, environmentally friendly paint, quotes from ancient texts and images and photos gathered from contemporary sources.
While making this work I have been influenced by the art of Matisse, Robert Irwin and Stuart Davis; the textile designs of William Morris and traditional American quilters; and the landscape design of Dan Kiley, Thomas Church and Roberto Burle Marx.
Making a garden is the process of imposing order onto a seemingly chaotic, incomprehensible natural and social environment. It is this struggle between order and chaos that creates beauty, new ideas, deeper understanding and repose but also discordance, ambiguity, turbulence and ugliness.
My work begins with a study of gardens and landscapes. I revel in the collision of the exuberance and complexity of disorder with the struggle to create structure and comprehension. I am interested in how places are defined through their presence (how they are defined or marked), through narrative (their stories, histories and interpretations) and through context (how they fit into the bigger world).
My current work spans many scales and mediums. My paintings / constructions are landscapes from multiple perspectives, most often an aerial view. They are intended to be difficult to take in all at once. The viewer is compelled to look at them at various distances and angles. As the light changes, so do the shadows and colors of the compositions.
I also create large temporary site specific works in rural pastures and on urban lawns and athletic fields. Like all my work, these are intended to be viewed from multiple perspectives—from space and ground level. Time and weather act on the pieces which means they are viewed from multiple temporal perspectives as well. For these larger works I use plywood, stencils, flowers, environmentally friendly paint, quotes from ancient texts and images and photos gathered from contemporary sources.
While making this work I have been influenced by the art of Matisse, Robert Irwin and Stuart Davis; the textile designs of William Morris and traditional American quilters; and the landscape design of Dan Kiley, Thomas Church and Roberto Burle Marx.
