My original college degree in biology has been a major influence in both the visual and ecological context of my work as a printmaker. My work is rooted in the symbiotic ecostructure we all precariously live in, and involves an elaborate, possibly excessive, process that (re)cycles the original post-consumer paper and plastic through several art forms and media, including acrylic, watercolor, printmaking, marbling, papermaking and sculpture.

I have been working on an ongoing print installation sculpture and performance series titled The Great Trash Reef since 2015. Its latest incarnation is the Creature from the Bleached Lagoon which references Japanese Kaiju movies and B movie monster flicks. There are also lanterns that read as undersea jellyfish or life. Together or apart they infest the environment. Constructed from my own recyclables, plus debris I’ve collected from the streets and beaches (preventing it from ending up in an ocean or landfill), The Great Trash Reef takes recognizable material and transforms it into something incongruously beautiful. This personalization of waste allows viewers to more directly engage with our ecological issues, especially the pollution of our oceans and waterways.

My imagery is derived from nature, mimicking and abstracting the patterns nature creates. Recently, I’ve included a series of flat print papermaking and printmaking using advertising waste, like Mylar labels, leaving tiny pieces of trademarks and branding in my sculptures, calling to mind another layer of pollution. Conceptually I’m also thinking about what human leave behind the past, a layering of debris and natural fibers of leaf and soil, the cellulose of papermaking. Work is layered images from archaeology, broken arrows, Roman clasps, bits of ceramic. This work has started to break apart and become diffuse, with debris scattered beyond the original boundaries like constellations, some pieces barely larger than the head of a pin. As in nature, eventually these pieces will come together with the rest of the trash islands, evolving and living.

My mother used to say, “See a penny, pick it up – all day long you’ll have good luck,” and I have had my eyes to the ground ever since. I am a magpie, a treasure seeker, picking up whatever shiny or strange element I encounter on my daily walks. Trash is especially compelling – like the fish and birds who mistake it for food, I am drawn to the false colors and surprising luster, the way it disrupts nature’s more neutral designs. The sheer amount of material I have to work with is a sign that we must make fundamental changes to limit waste, despite nature’s miraculous response – one example is a bacteria, ideonella sakainsis, that eats plastic. Regardless of our actions, nature will likely survive our short-sighted hubris, although we might not.