Artist Statement

The American landscape has sustained brutal changes, and its short history only underscores the brutality. Seen by turns as an untouched paradise to control, a lush mystery to explore, a powerful force to be subdued, or a sanitized growing medium to produce, the land has been changed and changed again. Westward expansion enabled land grabs and territory shaping. The draining of swamps, damming of rivers, and digging of canals produced towns. Slashing, burning, and tillage made way for Monoculture.

The Agroccult series does not depict these events in a way that is immediately recognizable; rather, it focuses on the land itself as a stage for the series of tragedies enacted upon it. Images of archetypal mysticism peek through the curtains of traditional landscapes, asking the viewer to question the ritual, the beliefs, the motives of its cultural totems and memorials now appearing on stage. Where do our land ideologies and geographic xenophobias come from? What is the burden? Can we be forgiven?