Watershed Works

The tenuous boundary between living nature and human encroachment is the primary unifying theme in my work. The dislocated, discarded, mass-produced objects found littering the edges, cracks, and seams of our natural world provide evidence of our collective post-purchase consumer amnesia, the forgetfulness that erases our culpability.

Local beach-found flotsam, PETE water bottles, plastic toy animals and product packages are but a few of the found items that I use as subject and medium in my work. Painting traditionally with oil and gouache, I lovingly and meticulously craft repeated images of traditionally ugly beach flotsam, thus creating provocative juxtapositions of form and idea. I also assemble these same cast-off readymade materials in repetition, constructing sculptures that emphasize the relentless insistency of manufacture.

My ongoing gouache series, Watershed: Taxonomy of Trash and Watershed: Narratives present ironic catalogs of our new post-consumer creatures of the sea. Castaways from grocery shelf life, synthetic products proudly and cheerily proclaim their natural rights as they strand and break apart on our inter-tidal coasts. As gyres of garbage swirl in the Pacific, plastic becomes the new sand.