Maps, Birds, Botanical Art 2019-present
This gallery is a mix of artwork from a several different series including; NYC Natural, Selected Weeds, Winter Reveals/Botanical Drawings, and Nature Contained.
Maps: I enjoy incorporating maps into my work as a way to explore the landscape from a broader perspective. I hope it will inspire curiosity in viewers about the New York City landscape and about the many waterways and natural areas here, as well as inspire thoughts about water access and immersive nature experiences. On an abstract level I enjoy how painting NYC maps allows me to appreciate the shapes, contours, and geometry of NYC and also the design challenge of curbing my impulse to take artistic license or at least balance it with my desire to represent land and water masses accurately.
Selected Weeds: Inspired by the practice of “Selective Weeding,” whereby some weeds are permitted in gardens, this series explores the grey area around weeds and looks closely at some specific wild plants in both urban and rural environments.
Whether native, non native, invasive, or non invasive, many 'weeds' have benefits: hosting insects, feeding wildlife, remediating pollution, controlling erosion, offering aesthetic value, or containing medicinal properties, while drawbacks could include outcompeting cultivated plants or poisoning adjacent crops.
Weeds are arguably more benign in cities when contained by hardscapes, curbing invasive tendencies and requiring low maintenance, resisting disease, and having an ability to grow in disturbed soils under extreme weather conditions.
Having worked in industrial zones, like Gowanus, Brooklyn, for 30 years, I’ve come to love weeds, especially when reframed by asphalt and concrete. I admire their resilience and tenacity, a quality all New Yorkers must cultivate to survive here. And I delight in their emergence in barren corners and in nature's spontaneous curation. In my Brooklyn backyard a small meadow emerges each summer, all from a single crack in the pavement, all of different species each year :)
* I learned the term "selective weeding" from the ecology and horticultural teams at Oak Spring Gardens during my 2023 artist residency
Winter Reveals: These botanical drawings were inspired by some explorations in green spaces near my studio in the winter time.
Nature Contained: This series was done in collaboration with an art collective I was part of 2016-2020, The Gowanus Swim Society. Three of us members exhibited works together all inspired by the gardens of the Old Stone House Brooklyn and Washington Park and working with the curator of OSH, Katherine Gressel. Several of the work were done collaboratively, begun in one of our studios and then passed around. Three Siblings was done exclusively by me inspired specifically by the Three Sister’s companion planting in the OSH Gardens.
