Encounters
How does the quality of our thinking affect the quality of the forms we make? How do encounters with natural forms change the way we think and act in the world? For the past year I’ve been exploring these questions through a series of oil paintings, collages, and clay and beeswax sculptures. Drawn to the provisional yet functional architecture of natural forms like bird nests and pre-industrial bee hives, the work sits at the intersection of human and non-human modes of thinking and making and meditates on our capacity to build embedded rather than isolated futures with the natural world.
The sculptures are a new medium for me, having worked primarily as a painter. I have turned to the organic mediums of clay, slate, beeswax, and chalk to create forms that ask questions about what we learn and unlearn by engaging with natural forms.
The collages reference the open weave of nest construction meditating on the ways culture shapes and re-shapes our thinking.
The oil paintings are part of a larger series that pairs forms created by human hands with those woven by non-human species. And the nest monoprints are from my early explorations in this area.
The large drawings are part of a series inspired by pre-industrial beehives. I am drawn to these organic forms for their beauty and their imaginative construction through the centuries. They serve as totems to human imagination and our capacity to live in reciprocity with bees and other non-human species.