Methods of Dispersal and Establishment

This series layers lichens with versions of landscapes only possible from a human vantage point: aerial views; composites mapped from memory.

The objective is to illustrate a balance between extremely slow forms of erosion and regrowth--in terms of both human and natural establishments--and the volatile forces that re-shape our world and our perspectives of it instantaneously.

The methods of achieving and visualizing this balance differs from one landscape to another, but perhaps a universal key can be found in the symbiotic lives of every landscapes' lichens.

Methods of Dispersal and Establishment

Mount St. Helens / lichen flow.

Observations on Fragmentation and Loss

Made during a winter spent watching over a house and a tiny white dog in a hundred-year-old apple orchard in the North Cascades, while the house's long-time inhabitants were away dealing with a heavy loss.

Observations, continued

Years later I translated my small scale sketchbook drawing to a 4x4' panel of scrap wood from a house I lived in in Bow, WA-- a dreamy landscape in the corner of the US if ever there was one.

Divergent Fault

aerial view of bigleaf maple twig. Magnified 60x. Made during artist residency in North Cascades National Park.

Mining Claim

A lichened whorl on a barely-standing cabin on my mom's defunct mining claim outside of Helena, Montana.

Vapor Recollection in Cryptothecia rubrocincta

At one point I somehow ended up traversing the country a number of times, going back and forth between the Florida panhandle (where my family is) and the eastern Sierras, where I was working on a mural project. The cloud formations, neon lichens, and abandoned structures on both sides became conflated, drifted upward, crystallized and are still in the process of re-dispersal.

Construction, East Berlin