Increasingly concentrated on the environment and natural phenomena, my work exists in multiple forms including photography, painting, sculpture and public art installation. Working within particular ecological systems (forests, glaciers, lightning fields, root systems) and directly with raw materials from specific environments, (coal, glacier ice, magnetic material, dried earth) my process provides an entry point for exploration and non-linear research.

Coal and Glacier Water Landscape, the five-panel mural installed as part of Material Agency, exists as an enlarged version of a series of smaller photogram (cameraless) prints made in direct contact with coal and melted glacier ice. Glacier ice, gathered on-site in Alaska and coal collected from mines in Pennsylvania were mixed together, exposed and printed through analog processes, resulting in a kind of fabricated landscape created from raw materials.

The piece is part of a larger series, Strata, which pairs these photogram prints with Arctic landscape photographs made in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago within the Arctic Circle with a history of coal mining. Contrasting and connecting glacier ice and coal, I’m interested in the environmental relationship between these materials. I’m also interested in the geologic connections – both materials are formed through compression over time and each hold our shared planetary history locked into their dense and layered makeup.

While the content relates to the environment, the work is very much about our psychological connection and disconnection with the natural world and considers hidden information and shifting landscapes.

• MATERIAL AGENCY