I engage with routine aspects of daily life with intentionality to reveal the sublime quality hidden in everyday experiences. In this body of work, I documented daily walks with my phone camera for over a year, transformed the photos into layered digital collages, then printed the images on fabric or projected them. As I walked, the edges of unnoticed boundaries — areas of ignored, unpruned abundance, where life grows wild and neglected — attracted my attention.

Entwining the rambling process of walking with intuitive visual creation, I search for the heightened state of the sublime. Rather than seeking ever more grand vistas, I change the scale to embrace intimacy and close observation. Physically, I perceive an unstable environment. I have myopia, astigmatism, and a damaged optic nerve. Combining this visual deficit with my love for overlooked spaces where nature runs rampant, and using a rectangular composition referencing both the phone frame and art history, I created a layered, shifting series of images. Within these images perceptions of the outer world and the intense emotions of the inner world meld.

My belief in the interconnectedness of people and place drives this work. We are this planet, and without it we will die. We must protect it. By paying attention to the intimate connection of my body with the local landscape, I maintain that the sublime exists in the mundane and the ignored. We only need to see it. If we pay attention, with intention, to the world around us now, we can change our future.

• 2022 MFA SUMMER THESIS: Where I’m Coming From