I collaborate with animals, mainly my team of young oxen and my horse, to create artworks. In practice, I address notions of interspecies kinship, multispecies history, and more-than-human collaboration through earthworks, installation, sculpture, sound, and social practice.
The current focus in my practice is Domestic Rewilding, a series of site-sensitive native plant species gardens that are ecological in nature. These works are fabricated and maintained by interspecies labor and the work advocates that interspecies relationships do create legitimate social communities and should be considered as such in socially engaged art. Sculptural and installation works utilize practical farm materials such as twine, baling netting, and salt licks, or materials accumulated through interspecies touch, such as hair and fur. Performances are structured with specific animal collaborators in mind. I use sound recordings and digital tools to document site-specific works and sometimes as translation tools for gallery presentation. Moving image works often document intimacy with place and specific animals.
My work is informed by lived experience of caring for animals and nurtured by continued participation in farm work and animal husbandry. I am the primary caregiver for my team of oxen; their welfare directs the vast majority of choices I make in my life and practice. Caring for the animals is the first thing I do each morning and the last thing at night. My intentions are not to romanticize the past, but to see it as messy and complicated to imagine a future in which all beings are recognized for their contributions to the co-creation of our world. I am particularly interested in the capacity of art to push conflicting or violent histories up against one another in generative ways.
Formative years spent in barns, riding horses, and at summer-long riding camps compel me towards this work. My practice is an extension of a lifelong multispecies education through the development of long-term relationships with human, nonhuman collaborators, and place.
I'd like to extend an extra special thank you to our neighbors/landlords. After moving in to our little farm rental, I brought up my project in conversation and my neighbor generously extended the offer to keep the oxen on their property. They built a shed, fence, provided water access and electricity specifically for Clark and Sparky. The family, who wishes to remain anonymous, has been instrumental in making ALL this recent work happen. I am very appreciative of their generosity of space and resources.
The current focus in my practice is Domestic Rewilding, a series of site-sensitive native plant species gardens that are ecological in nature. These works are fabricated and maintained by interspecies labor and the work advocates that interspecies relationships do create legitimate social communities and should be considered as such in socially engaged art. Sculptural and installation works utilize practical farm materials such as twine, baling netting, and salt licks, or materials accumulated through interspecies touch, such as hair and fur. Performances are structured with specific animal collaborators in mind. I use sound recordings and digital tools to document site-specific works and sometimes as translation tools for gallery presentation. Moving image works often document intimacy with place and specific animals.
My work is informed by lived experience of caring for animals and nurtured by continued participation in farm work and animal husbandry. I am the primary caregiver for my team of oxen; their welfare directs the vast majority of choices I make in my life and practice. Caring for the animals is the first thing I do each morning and the last thing at night. My intentions are not to romanticize the past, but to see it as messy and complicated to imagine a future in which all beings are recognized for their contributions to the co-creation of our world. I am particularly interested in the capacity of art to push conflicting or violent histories up against one another in generative ways.
Formative years spent in barns, riding horses, and at summer-long riding camps compel me towards this work. My practice is an extension of a lifelong multispecies education through the development of long-term relationships with human, nonhuman collaborators, and place.
I'd like to extend an extra special thank you to our neighbors/landlords. After moving in to our little farm rental, I brought up my project in conversation and my neighbor generously extended the offer to keep the oxen on their property. They built a shed, fence, provided water access and electricity specifically for Clark and Sparky. The family, who wishes to remain anonymous, has been instrumental in making ALL this recent work happen. I am very appreciative of their generosity of space and resources.