Invasives
Installation in Palo Verde Gallery, Tucson, AZ
October 2023
Buffelgrass is an invasive plant introduced to the Southwest as a form of erosion control and cattle feed. This body of work utilizes collected invasive buffelgrass to consider the human propensity to constrain and organize the world around us. The grass takes over swaths of the landscape, using up precious water resources, driving out local wildlife and native plants, and exacerbating wildfires in the already fire-prone desert. Buffelgrass has spread rapidly throughout the region and is now beyond eradication.
By combining broken and manipulated grid forms with collected buffelgrass, I examine the frailty of structures imposed onto uncontrollable spaces and the errant attempt at systemized power over the landscape. I aim to lean into the intrinsically disorderly qualities of the grass paired with the flawed networks of the human-structured world to create works that feel strange and precarious.
Buffelgrass (Invasives), Invasive buffelgrass, epoxy resin, glue, welded steel, found landscaping rocks, paper pulp, acrylic paint, fishing weights, variable dimensions, 2023.
Other work from this series:
Controlled Burn I-III, unique screen print, variable dimensions, 2023.
Buffelgrass I-V, unique screen print, 15” x 22”, 2023.