Interpreting Nature with an Xacto Blade

An acute awareness of water drives me to examine aspects of it everywhere I live and travel. Water’s physical and metaphysical powers to unite, circulate, connect, and sustain compel me to visually translate water issues into two and three dimensions, and site-specific installations.

I hand cut, fold, incise, sculpt, stretch, and tie paper, plastic, Mylar and Tyvek to interpret the physics of water flow as well as distressing environmental concerns. My primary tool is an Xacto knife. The act of cutting fills me with energy and ideas. I feel like Zorro.

I study and select scientific research data and filter facts that can translate into pattern. Those patterns are hand cut into components to express environmental situations like the ecosystem breakdown in the Great Lakes, riparian habitats in the Yampa River in Colorado, the quality of groundwater in Nebraska, mixed use issues in the Hudson River Watershed in New York and environment preservation in the Colombian Amazon.

The work invites communities and viewers to engage in a heightened reflection on our shared responsibilities toward water.