Chaos Garden II
The work in this series explores imagery connected to landscape architecture, and the planning of gardens and yards. Human beings are immersed in a cognitive dissonance cycle of the impact of our consumer habits and choices, and a desire to control, shape and beautify our immediate surroundings. The white negative space of these pieces is lightly disrupted by a matte sheen serigraph, which can only be seen in close proximity to the work. The white of the eastern, machine produced paper represents a covering up, or exclusion of the harm we do to our environment, and the positive, hand-printed and hand-made washi shapes emphasize and represent the shallow beautification of our flora obsessions. We shape, cut, alter and groom our landscape while ignoring our desperate and dying planet, and the effect of industrial agricultural practices on the biodiversity of our world. Shapes and drawing within the positive objects reference symbols of landscape architecture. Wood relief offset over the positive shapes, which are silhouetted flower buds, connect to the materiality of wood and bark. Titles reference latin names of plants paired with common agricultural chemicals, and help to connect the concept of cultivating the beauty of our gardens, yards, communities and public spaces all the while denying climate change and the impact of the climate crisis on the global human family.
