The creative process is like a rhizome.

Rhizome is an interconnected system of roots, underground and not always apparent. My work investigates the interconnectedness of seemingly mundane objects , toys, plants and animals in our world to connect our daily lives to our past, our planet, pain, healing and transformation. My hope is by recognizing the force of things there will be less thoughtless waste, less violence toward a variety of bodies and more ecological awareness to the treadmill of production and consumption and promote a more attentive relationship between humans and things. The rhizome reveals the threads of connection binding our fate to theirs.

How It Started

After my grandmother died, we went through the process of cleaning out her home.  During that time, three old plastic dolls from the 1930's ended up in a box mixed up with a collection of bones I had been carting around for years. I remember distinctly looking into the box and seeing these bones and dolls together and something clicked. The small dolls left by my ancestor, the bones of the dead animals contained in a box held something that spoke a story that moved through both the power of the small and death. A vulnerability opened up in a non-human world. It became a world populated by animate things rather than passive objects.

I take photographs using the wet plate collodion process from the 1800's. Combined with the found animal skeletons and bodies I also included fairy tale archetypal dolls. These forms bore the desire to express story in what has been left behind.