Artist Statement
As an artist and farmer, my greatest companion in life is the earth.
From the microbes and nematodes, to the mountains and their waters, from the first frost to seismic shifts in climate, my food, inspiration and spiritual life, come from the well of the earth.
In both roles as farmer and artist, I occupy the constructed, liminal space between modernity and the earth. As a small-scale vegetable farmer, that space is for growing food for my local community. As an artist, that space is for reflecting on our changing relationship with the earth in a capitalist, colonial world. In both roles my goal stays the same: connection. Although reconnection might be a more fitting word, since the more I farm and create art, the more I realize that our connection with the land is our default, and therefore, the more my work as an artist is concerned with revealing a pathway toward that reconnection for all.
Being both an artist and farmer, requires endless, laborious hours of unseen work in order to nourish, both physically and spiritually, our collective connection to our local land. Both require long, hard days of attentiveness and labor in order for the earth to reveal her mysteries. Time spent in the changing flow of the seasons while observing how each small element interacts with the whole, makes me a better artist, farmer and person.