Anatomy of a Future Forest - Series Statement
How will our plant life transform over the next 100 years? 1000 years? With the continuing ecological impact of climate change, the steady deforestation of native species, and the disturbance of our global ecosystem, it is unclear what the future holds for plant life on our planet. How will plants adapt? Will they mutate into a new variety in order to sustain life? Will heartier plant communities swallow up more vulnerable ones and ultimately change their genetic composition?
At this time in our collective history, I believe the issue of climate change and its potential ramifications on plant life is a compelling topic to investigate on a visual level. For the past 18 months, I have been taking on the role of a future naturalist and documentarian: discovering, cataloging and visually recording potential new generations of flora. To re-imagine these hybrids of the future, I combine natural forms with visuals found in scientific journals and old-world imagery. Resource materials have included 16th, 17th and 18th century biological and botanical manuscripts, early 20th century medical textbooks, on-line herbarium databases and global topographical maps. My imagined terrestrial worlds, both familiar and slightly unnerving, suggest a connection to these past scholarly works that attempted to identify, classify and illustrate plant life.
Most recently I have been working on mixed media paintings that resemble oversized botanical and pseudo-scientific journal pages. Through these paintings I have begun to cultivate a more narrative approach to the plants and the series in general. As my project progresses, it is my hope that this series will educate, inspire, provoke and bring about some type of individual change in people’s stewardship of our planet.