Climate change affects us all, however it has been indirectly informing my work for quite some time. I am interested in creating work dealing with the more frequent occurrence and increasing strength of storms/hurricanes as a result of climate change. After experiencing Super Storm Sandy, I began painting on firewood. The wood was vital for basic necessities once the power went out. This material that is usually ignored or used as a luxury in winter was elevated to a higher standard. Using this disregarded material I created paintings and sculptures.
I would like to continue my exploration into the effects of intensifying storms in our environment as well as how these more frequent storms affect architecture. It is a strange dichotomy that both the natural and man-made have been affected negatively by our environmental decisions. The trees are manufactured into the structures that are to shelter us from the storms that we are unfortunately helping to escalate. It’s as if there is a war between the man-made and natural world with both ending up as the losers.
During this residency, I would like to create an installation of fallen trees cut up into pieces and stacked precariously at varying heights in order to replace the ones toppled by storms. These sculptures would exist freestanding as well as paintings on firewood and found wood with abstracted architecture affected by storms. These paintings evoke my sense of helplessness as the weather takes over. The paintings on firewood start on the wall, crawl down and end up in varying stacks on the floor. I would also like to include seedlings to give out in order to replace the trees that are felled by storms.
Here are some examples of past work. I’d like to create larger scale versions with an addition of tree stumps.
