Artist Statement 2025
I create artwork that explores nature, heritage, and the passage of time. In my series of tapestries and digital captures, the work aims to highlight the tension between the slow rhythms of nature and the accelerated, mechanized processes of the digital age. The contrast reflects larger forces in connection to place – land claimed and contested, histories preserved and erased, movement and rootedness – revealing how time, labor, and technology shape our connection to place.
Inspired by the rugged beauty of Scotland during my Fulbright tenure there, I explored my deep ancestral ties to the land, the Scottish diaspora, and the shifting landscape of my home in the Bay Area; this work examines the unseen forces that shape our perception of nature and place. Comparing the two Invernesses—one in Scotland, the other in California—the work echoes how we carry connections to areas that can be physically traced deep within our very bones through DNA. Fleeting landscapes—altered by time, climate, and human intervention—serve both as subject and metaphor, highlighting the transient nature of our connection to our environment. By combining digital photography, mechanized textile fabrication, and the slow, ancient art of hand weaving, my practice meditates on impermanence and a rooted physical connection to nature. Capturing landscapes without alteration from the vantage point of fast-moving trains and vehicles, I distill fragmented and fleeting moments into views that are meant to contemplate the impact of colonial histories, migration, and lost knowledge. Through this work, I offer a poetic dialogue between the ephemeral and the enduring, inviting viewers to reconsider how landscape—both physical and cultural—is constructed, contested, and remembered.
The installation in Italy marked my ongoing research into lands that I barely knew but am tied to, according to my DNA markers, and wherein I studied the beautiful decay of the walls and deep excavations in Siena, along with patterns in local art and architecture. My interest in nature, landscape, and science can also be seen through my past installations that consisted of sculptural, parasitic paintings that envelop architecture and challenge traditional notions of the sublime by contrasting its awe-inspiring majesty with latent threats—viruses, swarms, and other unseen forces. Occupied with this work for about ten years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the work felt strangely prescient. I struck out into new forms, processes, and interests after a post-COVID solo show in Oakland.
