The Land Within

As you move through the space, I ask what is nature to you? What comes to mind when you think of nature?

Do you think of towering hills and mountains that extend to graze the sky?

Or the sweet smell of cedar trees as your tires crunch on gravel roads through the sun-dappled trees.

Sand warmed by the hands of the sun as you walk along, with the never-ending waters of an ocean as it hugs the curves of the world beside you.

The viewpoint of nature that I had growing up was simply of the woods that grew behind my house.  This place with statuesque trees so tall that when you look up you felt the excited dizzying effects of the breath of the trees.  As I grew older, I was always drawn to what was outside.  I started to expand what nature was to me, not just the woods in my backyard, but the foliage that lined the streets in a city, to the house plants my mom keeps.  I started to explore this fascination with the natural world through my art in the form of images.

In this exhibition of “The Land Within” I share my relation to nature.  The connection I see between the body and the land.  Overlaying images and videos of the outside world onto the body allows for the artwork to start blending in places as the imagery begins to take a breath with the viewer.  Hair flowing down the back like leaves hanging from a tree, or the strong cuts of a mountain showing in the valleys and curves of a body.  This likeness between us, the body, and the natural world, is not just a likeness, but a connection.  A connection that continues to expand through technology, which surrounds and engulfs us, like the natural world that forms around us.