starting plants

I have started the onions, peppers and eggplant.

"Cold Storage" at Worksound Gallery

For the month of February, my installation Cold Storage will be on display in the group show, White Noise at Worksound Gallery.
PORT even has a video of the opening on their blog. It ends by going into my iceberg; similar to my own video.

Artist Statement

Cold Storage

Mission Statement of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault:

“The purpose of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is to provide insurance against both incremental and catastrophic loss of crop diversity held in traditional seed banks around the world. The Seed Vault offers “fail-safe” protection for one of the most natural resources on earth.”

Currently, our world’s seeds are stored in a well locked tunnel on a quiet island of Norway. This vault is naturally cooled with freezing Arctic air and is surrounded by slowly melting icebergs. This construction is basically a safety deposit box for seed banks around the globe. For the “Cold Storage” installation each iceberg has been systematically created based on this vault.
Each of the icebergs are represented by a different continent. Each form is constructed with the countries from that particular region. The size of each country is based on the amount of seeds they donated to the vault. This changes the look and dominance of each country.
Two hundred and twenty countries store seeds at this vault and one wonders how these will be protected. If there is a global disaster will this single vault decide who has the most power? Could the country with the most seeds have supremacy? Of all the countries India would become the dominant authority; it holds over 45 million seeds at Svalbard. The second highest would be Mexico with 15 million. The smallest country is Equatorial Guinea with only 43 seeds.
A seed vault offers global insurance against disaster. Seeds are already disappearing and this vault should protect future generations. It seems like something from a science fiction novel, but this is our reality.

Opening

The opening reception went really well. There were a lot of people interested in the subject of Victory Gardening. Many pointed out that maybe Obama will reinstate it. The bands were also really great and it felt good to give this body of work some focus. I will take parts of this for my thesis show.

Solo Show at Launch Pad Gallery

In November, I will be showing my current project, Local Victory at Launch Pad Gallery here in Portland. I have been working on a lot of new approaches for the show: plywood cutouts, resin, colored pencil, and poster printing. Some of the processes have been difficult, but it has been great pushing some limits for myself.
For more information, please follow this link: Launch Pad

Second Year MFA Show

For the month of September, the second year MFA students have installed work that represents what we have been working on this past year. I decided to hang the first of four seed order paintings and create an installation of my "Local Victory" projects. This summer, I spent a lot of time in my yard. Being able to watch the growth of your food can be really satisfying. I wanted to include these plants in the show because they are also part of my work this summer.
Since I plan on having lots of plants in my thesis show, this was great to see how the plants do in this space. I put a sign on the tomato plants saying that people can eat them and it is rare that a red one sticks around. I think that people like the opportunity to interact with work in a gallery space because so often they are not allowed to.
Currently, I am working on connecting with some other organizations to see if some of these posters can be useful. On my "Local Victory" blog, there are many links to websites that are pushing the idea of contemporary Victory Gardening. This project has really been thought provoking for me and I hope an influence with others as well.

New Poster

I have been having fun reworking my drawings. I came up with this image.

New Drawing

I have enjoyed working on my current paintings, but I somewhat miss being more abstract. I like the combo of recognizable with abstract. So, I did a little drawing from a glass, paper cutout collage that I had created. This is a 6"x6" watercolor pencil drawing on paper.