Artist Statement
Fairy houses, elaborate snow forts, stick huts and bees wax figurines are just a few things I created as a child. I still enjoy becoming one with nature when time permits. I have always loved creating with my hands and mind—open to nature, fantasy and adventure. During the winter I would play in the snow as any child does, leaving perfect imprints of my heavy snow boot soles in the crisp white blanket, creating pictures. During the summer, when I went to the beach, I would take an umbrella along in order to draw with its slender tip, intricate sand images along the expansive canvas of nature. My work uses nature as a means of conveying theoretic anthropological themes.
We as humans are compelled to transmit our memories and stories to others. This tradition has always been an essential part of cultures around the world, a way of ensuring that individual and social identity will continue on after death. Today, we still have this seed planted within us; feeling the need to tell our story in an attempt to help others grow and build upon errors which occurred in the past as well as leaving an imprint of our legacy on the world. Similarly, my grandmother’s stories of World War II in Scotland, has contributed to my growth.
My work deals with the inheritance of memory, contributing to the growth of an individual, through the use of fractals found in nature. Fractals are a geometric shape which can be split into parts that are considered a reduced copy of the whole. Trees possess the universal symbol of family and leaves, memory; both containing the fractal form. Leaves grow and die with time, fertilizing the tree and enabling new memories to form. The use of fractals and geometry is just one evident example of how I convey memory.
