In a multimodal way, I sense in, with, and as the world. Through creative, interdisciplinary practice, I come to better understand, participate with, and become that which I sense. My outputs and engagements are thus a record of this research and a manifestation of our metaphysical, multisensory existence. My hope is that they might offer others evidence of, a placeholder for, an entry point into, and/or an experience of this vibrant, sensuous, insightful world.
Through a creative practice that permeates all aspects of my life, I cultivate relationships with ecosystems to glean 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 leadership. But to begin, my spirited “process of acquaintance” involves multi-sensory, relational research and collaboration with the animate world as synthesized through visual means.
The conversation starts with on-site fieldwork with an ecosystem. A convergence of perspectives from natural science, history, philosophy, psychology, and spiritual traditions inform my in-situ experience as a synesthetic, human sensor. There, I physicalize phenomenological information with drawing, collage, painting, installation, photography, and digital media. The relationship continues in the studio, and, if the situation allows, back on site. As I experience different vantage points, time scales, seasons, materials, 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.
The collection of artwork from a given site accumulates to compose a team of meaning-seekers, eager to translate insights that can only be revealed through a continuity of intimate, reciprocal, ongoing participation. In such an idiosyncratic convergence of these [constructs of]place, time, and person, the boundaries grow porous. Each time this happens, my process of acquainting morphs into a reciprocity of consciousness: the insights my collaborator has gifted me arise and are activated within myself. The task then becomes to live this consciousness into the world.
And live them into the world I do. Teaching, collaborating, speaking, mentoring, parenting, friending, partnering, consulting; as a result of absorbing the rhythms of the world into my being, my practice propels itself into all dimensions. 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, transmit, and transport.
