Weed Suit no.1 — goldenrod

2024 Installation

I wondered, I wonder, If schoolrooms and streets with populated with citizens clothed in garments printed with “weeds”, how would psyches be affected? So I sewed a jumpsuit of cotton printed with an imagery of goldenrod in the Catskill Mountains to explore the idea.

And created a video collage of a kid who lives on my block — Clara — dressed in the weed suit.

Handmade jumpsuit of printed cotton denim on wall-mounted photographic print.

My niece actually said the words, said that she "hated nature."

Born and raised in NYC, was it her 23 years of standing on man-made materials, filling her lungs with subway tunnel air, her reality that circled the purchase of this, focused on the price of that... what had made her believe herself separate from the natural world? Separate from what she is??

Considering the tendency of the contemporary human to dismiss nature as other, I focused on the aspects of nature most diminished — the plants that we rarely even name in anything other than the slanderous term, weeds. And as I explored the critical role that "weeds" play in a biologically diverse system, my mind first settled on goldenrod.

In New York State, goldenrod is one of the final plants to blossom in autumn and its seeds fuel the journey of migrating birds, such as the rose-breasted grosbeak.

Detail of single channel video installation

Clara In The Weed Suit

2024
Single channel video on 65” monitor with wall drawing

Created as a concept / pitch for an industry label (ie. Boden or the Gap), weed suit proposes that human bodies can be used to create (representational) fields of biodiversity, while harnessing the mechanisms of capitalism as a catalyst for social change

Gathering Electrons / detail

Gathering Electrons

2024
Single Channel video mandala on 65” screen with wall drawing.

Might the human sense of separation from the natural world be a result of our upright carriage?

Everything we use to gather sensory information: our noses, eyes, hands and ears are (at minimum five feet) removed from the surface of our planet. Our one point of contact, our feet, we wrap in rubber, a material that blocks the exchange of energy with the earth’s surface.

But what if we didn’t?

Gathering electrons is a visual suggestion of the practice of the touching the earth’s surface with our flesh, with our bare feet, a practice known as grounding or earthing, presented as a vertical video mandala created of captured footage of a human: making their feet bare, walking, and eventually crawling, layered with springtime foliage and isolated dandelions.

Shame Stigmata / detail

Shame stigmata

2024
Single channel video installation
Animated collage of hand-traced self-portraits collaged with found footage of smoke+steam on 65” monitor. Mounted on painted wall with “I’m Sorry” hand-written and semi-erased. With hand-made incense and eraser.

I open my palms and release my shame to the sky — to the ether — to the “be gone from me.”

the smell of shame no.1

2024
handmade incense

bdellium
lotus petals
orris root
pinon pine resin
little clams
nutmeg
allowswood
makko

Nesting Lessons / detail

nesting lessons

2023 single channel video.

natural world observations with haiku response + binaural audio

Natural NY

2022-Ongoing

Public Policy proposal.
Economic ideation.
Short-form video + photography
Web design + development

If the entirety of New York State was intentionally converted to organic+, regenerative agricultural methodology, what would the (health, economic, environmental) implications be? Can the mechanism of colonization be repurposed? Is it possible to supplant agri-industry with agricultural methods rooted in indigenous theory from within a trojan horse of economics and public exposure?

Natural NY / the Raisin Project / website screen grab

Seed Bombs media project website / screen grab

grass, cows + milk in the piece of earth we refer to as new york state

2023
a daisy chain of short-form video conversations with NYS dairy farmers, Sarah Chase of Chaseholm Dairy and Shannon Finn of Cowbella + Danforth Jersey Farm

Seed Bomb media project / detail

Corvid Kohl

2023-
Social media persona

playing with misinformation to create an earth-first tomorrow

For the Public Benefit / screen grab
Accidents + Inevitabilities with quantum astrophysicist Clara Sousa-Sliva / screen grab
Chaseholm Farm + Wegmans = regenerative together / screen grab

diversity Field Portrait

2023
C-Print

Created in collaboration with the 1000 Farms Project

Diversity Field Portrait. Hoosick Falls, NY

Natural Resources: 50 Stewards of the Catskills

2019
Photographic portraits of 50 people doing badass work in the Catskills. Created in collaboration with the Catskill Center.