Land Division | 2025
Statement
During a long drive out in western Colorado, I found myself idly musing about how much “open land” there exists in the world. But as soon as that thought arose I began to notice the fences. They wrapped each field and divided every open space. And I noticed the colors and texture of the grasses changing at each fenceline, hinting at the unique histories each parcel of land represented.
Every land has a history and here in the west, even seemingly “untouched” or “unused” lands contain a tapestry of stories. These lands have been traversed, stewarded, worshipped, grazed, plowed, sowed, stolen, claimed, divided, taxed, inherited, disputed, polluted, exploited, and developed. And yet these lands have existed longer than any of these actions performed upon them. They existed before colonizers stole them from indigenous nations. They existed eons before the emergence of humankind as a species. In the context of geological time, the assertion of individual ownership over these ancient lands seems absurd. But they’re owned nonetheless.
So, these collages are meditations on our history and our hubris. I’m referencing the westward expansion of the American empire by using vintage train imagery. And I’m obscuring and superseding those images with fragmented patchworks of grass, dirt, foliage and flowers. I’m asking if, in the elevation of nature, it’s possible to shift our focus off “what we own,” toward “what we owe?”