ARTIST STATEMENT

My work investigates the slippery intersection between the digital world and reality. Specifically, I am interested in how we experience nature through technology. We are currently living in a digital age where we predominantly experience the natural world through our phones, computers, and television screens. This distance from the reality of nature distorts our perspective and creates a disconnect. As species decline and fade into memory, so many animals and organisms now have a stronger presence in the digital world than in the natural world.

I use systems of nature as a point of departure to create sculptural work. With my “Re-things”, I create three-dimensional sculptural representations of two-dimensional images of nature I find online. I build my objects pixel by pixel in an overtly laborious process in direct contrast to the slipperiness and speed of the digital world. I am interested in how each pixel plays an important role in the identity of the object, the same way each cell plays a crucial role in the identity of an organism. Through this process of pixelation, details become distilled, distorted, or deleted.

Currently, I am exploring extinction, evolution, animal lore, mimicry, and the collision of digital and biological systems to pose the question: “What is nature becoming?”  

"In the game of life and evolution there are three players at the table: human beings, nature, and machines.  I am firmly on the side of nature. But nature, I suspect, is on the side of the machines." - George Dyson