Art

New Work 2025

The concept “Earthbound” refers to Bruno Latour’s claim that the Earth sets the final limits on what we may do. The first set of images focus on regeneration and our smallness next to the planetary. The tryptic below those entitled “Earthbound Man,” refers to simultaneous happenings.: Drought, fires, floods, or regeneration? My work explores the fragile environmental conditions that have emerged with the loss of Holocene stability. All species—with the exception of many humans—try to find ways to adapt and participate in a regenerative rather than a degenerative future. Through the medium of digital collage, using my own photographs plus borrowing an image of the Earth from NASA, I focus on both the lack of security and modes of adaptation. We must continue to actively create alternative modes of being on the planet because we cannot take for granted the background conditions of existence.

A woman bends down to look at fruit. The backdrop is an earth image, tangled roots, and green.
A small image of a couple viewing poppies while standing in an image of the earth filled with tangled roots.
A man and a boy discuss gardening and compost as they stand on the earth viewing a large root system.
Man stands on the earth contemplating the vastness of the planetary and a large earth shape filled with roots.

Earthbound Man

Man in the sky poised above a flooded earth.
Man in the sky poised above a earth ravaged by fire.
Man in sky poised above a verdant Earth.

Renewing the Forest Charter of 1217

The work below assembles eight collages [each 10 x 8″] and is a response to reading The Charter of the Forest of 1217, which restored rights to land and resources to “free men,” land that had been enclosed by Kings. This amounted to creating lawful rights to what one needs for subsistence or survival, and gradually it defined a “commons.” This Charter accompanied the Magna Carta and at the time was the more immediately significant document. No, it did not give rights to serfs, much less to women, who were considered property. But it did set the stage for more “abstract” rights later on, leading up to Human Rights and now environmental rights and laws. It also set the stage for conflicts over property rights, pitting individuals against each other and challenging the idea of a commons. Arguably, to remember, to renew, to rethink this charter now is to reconsider what counts as a “commons” in the Anthropocene, an age of planetary disruption and climate change. How do we, as “Earthbounds”—tethered to place, entangled in interdependent networks—manage our relationship to and with what we now realize is truly a commons, i.e., the Earth on which our and other species depend for our collective survival?

eight images that represent the earth as drought and then as flood and then the gradual regeneration of both the earth and human beings.

New Work: 2024

boy with sunflowers
Boy Saves Sunflower Seeds
two girls with copy of constitution
Deportation
boy digging in fertile soil
Regeneration
Girl with plastic bag and American flag and fireworks in the background.
Refugee
girl running from disaster
Leaving
woman staring out into chaotic disaster
War & Displacement
goose swimming in vague environment
A Goose
two children working with flowers in front of earth with people sailing toward mars in the background
Earthbound 1
boy standing on earth
Earthbound 3
planet with type on it people reading the words
Earthbound 8
woman with two children inside transparent globe of earth
Earthbound 5
Foolishness
Woman holds up transparent earth globe containing poppies
Earthbound 4

New Work: 2023

Children Playing in the Sea: Series

two children looking at a duck while standing in the sea
two children playing in the sea
two children with woman playing in the sea
two children playing in the sea
three children at beach building in sand and two ducks approaching them
two children on beach with iceberg in the background and many birds near the children
girl walking in water following birds
girl stands on iceberg with iphone
two men standing by an iceberg
wild seas with small rowers
girl runs through forest two people run in opposite direction
Girl Leaves Childhood 11x17
Girl goes down steps to a green area where two children are playing
New Futures 3 11x14
New Futures 4 17x11
Some of the following are part of the ""new future" series above. Some of Challenges being faced include drought, pollution ["Play"], and senseless school shootings ["Interruption"].

Walking in forests reminds me of renewal and regeneration.

Miscellaneous

All images continue my immersion in Anthropocene themes--extinction, drought, deforestation, collapse as represented by the graffiti building. But they also represent the inflection point of taking new directions.
Working with the same sunset photo taken during the California fires in 2020: the first is about our need for meditation. The other two reflect frustration about trash that finds its way into the oceans, increasing acidification. The fourth image with two fish left in the aquarium. The fifth image is about efforts to reclaim toxic or stressed environments.
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Everyday Life in the Anthropocene

Working with the ambiguity of clouds, mist, water, and possibly pollution.