Artist Statement

My work is an inquiry into the perceptual worlds of living systems, and into the limits of our ability to enter them. I treat plants, animals, and the relationships they form as subjects deserving the same sustained, rigorous study that architecture reserves for the built environment. I bring both playfulness and rigor to that study, and I consider holding the two together a responsibility, because the subject is life itself, which merits both curiosity and seriousness in equal measure.

I grew up in rural New Hampshire, where I learned how to care for plants from my grandmother, a master gardener, and how to read the woods from my father, a forager and fly-fisherman. Training as an architect taught me to analyze environments and identify important elements in how systems can support or limit the health of their occupants. I find there is a rich overlap between architectural pedagogy and the acute observational analysis that informs my practice.

Every species has their own balance of sensory perception. We are so informed by our register of input, it is impossible to separate what we perceive from what we think, and how we form our world views. It follows that other creatures perceive a world that the rest of us cannot ever fully know. A flower, a pool of water, or a shift in light can carry meanings for other animals that are entirely inaccessible to us. Their perceptions represent a form of operational intelligence. They are distinct and complete ways of being, and together they compose the planet.

My practice is a record of persistent, necessarily imperfect attention to life. It is a speculation into the worlds of other creatures and how they feel, see, think and operate in the world. It is a study in observation and imagination, and a reckoning with the limits of human perception. It insists on difference, for the sake of ecological diversity and for the sake of a planet that is kept large by the many ways there are of being alive in it.

Writing

Alongside my finished work, I keep Field Notes, a more informal space where I think through ideas behind the practice.

I write about nature and the built environment, and about things I have read or seen that get me thinking. I ask questions, and record observations about plants, animals, and the environments they share.

The writing is looser and more exploratory than most of the other work you will find here. If there’s something you find interesting in anything I write, please let me know. I would love to hear it.

Read the Field Notes →