I sense the world as a primal, preverbal, synesthetic rhythm. It sweeps me, awestruck, into its sensorial symphony. Feelings, thoughts, perceptions, impulses, and entities converge at their common, transient denominator. Everything flows and swarms and synchronizes in a synthesized dynamism. I click into, participate with and as this rhythm. My outputs and engagements are a record of my becoming and a manifestation of our metaphysical, multi-sensory existence; attempts to glean, bear witness to, and share this infinite beauty and insight.
Through a creative practice that permeates all aspects of my life, I cultivate relationships with ecosystems to absorb and participate in their wisdom. The insights I gain on the (literal) ground are then transferred into relationships with humans and societal systems, extending my visual practice into one of contemplation, conversation, and relational leadership. But to begin, my spirited “process of acquaintance” involves multi-sensory research and collaboration with the animate world as synthesized through visual means.
The conversation starts with on-site fieldwork, ideally in an ecosystem already activated by ecological concerns, educational activities, and/or interdisciplinary research. There, as a synesthetic, human sensor, creative inquiry physicalizes phenomenological and imaginal relationships in a given ecosystem. Through drawing, collage, painting, installation, photography, and digital media, connection develops on site and continues in the studio. Perspectives from the natural sciences, history, philosophy, psychology, and spiritual traditions converge to additionally feed emergent conversations. As I experience different vantage points, time scales, seasons, materials, textures, gestures, intelligences, and levels of consciousness, dialogue expands, understanding deepens, and I gladly dematerialize into the familiar inevitability: I am participating in an ever-expanding, multi-dimensional, transitory whole.
In such an idiosyncratic convergence of [these constructs of]place, time, and person, boundaries grow porous; process of acquaintance morphs into reciprocity of consciousness. Through continuous intimate, mutual participation, I and the emergent artwork coalesce into a team of meaning-seekers, witness-bearers, and wisdom representatives, honored to serve as conduits for more-than-human understanding. The task then becomes to live it into the world.
Through the developing relational work—and the relational nature of living life—paths of inquiry and process open toward opportunities for further connection. Collaborating, exhibiting, teaching, speaking, writing, mentoring, consulting…parenting, partnering, friending, being; there is no realm in which insights gathered on the ground do not offer expert guidance. My gift and responsibility is to elegantly and dexterously receive, translate, and transmit.
