ARTIST STATEMENT

Subtracting words from a printed page of an old book, I arrived at Re-Ground to be a form which speaks. It reflects my experience that knowing where we are can take a re-positioning to undo what we presupposed. These drawings, ephemera, and cardboard poems record the undoing of my assumptions of the Mojave from March to May of 2024.

Driving out from Los Angeles I jotted a note to myself, “Scale: oceanic”. Later, I heard “the smaller things are, the more complex they become” in an interview with the artist and writer James Bridle. When I stepped off the dirt road to photograph a wildflower, I felt uncannily the fragile-ness of what was beneath my feet. I knew I should not proceed, but did. The biological soil crusts in the Mojave, the thin sugar glaze you feel your weight cracking beneath your shoe soles, are immeasurably important to holding water and life together here. They take years to recover when disturbed, and decades to replace themselves, if they do at all. This I learned later. As immense as it seems, the Mojave is reliant on the smallest and oldest of vital bonds.

What I can offer as an artist is my experience that the plants and animals that share this place with us, the soils and plants from which they arise, are cognate, sensitive, and intelligent beings who can reveal to us a path of belonging and care of our shared home. Examining their stories reveals our role both past and present in them, and perhaps suggests a way forward. I am indebted in my research to the people who do exceptional work for the Mojave and the ecology of the West. A good deal of text is taken directly from research sources in an effort to provide a foil of straightforwardness to the kaleidoscopic reality of life, death and conservation in the desert.