My work is rooted in the biophysical world: soil, plants, and ecosystems that sustain all life, acknowledging the unfolding polycrisis. We live within a system organized around money and exchange, yet beneath it lies the physical reality that makes everything possible. From the vantage point of a city, that reality can be easy to overlook: shelves stay full, water flows from the tap, and the world appears abundant and limitless. Living on a farm in rural Central Oregon, I experience it differently. Clean water and air, healthy soil and ecosystems, food, and community health are the foundations of our lives.

The French astrophysicist Aurélien Barrau writes: “Beauty is everywhere, but the catastrophe is immense.” My work lives within this tension. I know a great deal about the catastrophe unfolding and about what we are losing, some of it forever, like a stable climate. Yet my work echoes the beauty of the world we still have. It seeks to create attention and attachment, holding awe and sorrow together.

As the polycrisis unfolds and we are entering uncharted territories, I have come to see resilience as something cultivated through the conditions of daily life: time on the land, the company of friends and neighbors, a rhythm of work and rest, and work that feels meaningful. I am deeply informed by the systems thinking of Nate Hagens, who reminds us that our capacity to engage with a complex world depends on what sustains us as human beings, and that meaningful work can move us toward “a better future than the default.”

At Authentique Artfarm, these conditions and my art practice grow from the same ground. Tending soil, planting, harvesting, and working on art projects belong to one rhythm, shaped by the seasons and by the people who gather here. I work with what I find: fallen branches, stones, bark, soil, discarded objects; and what I grow: plants from the farm, like sunflowers and willow. These materials carry traces of time, use, and ecological context, and working with them keeps my practice anchored in the living world.

Many of my installations are participatory. I invite visitors to contribute small gestures (placing, attaching, writing), allowing the work to evolve over time. These accumulations form shared spaces shaped by presence, attention, and care, inviting others to slow down and reconnect to the living world. I am also interested in how we perceive abundance. In a time marked by ecological breakdown and the growing awareness of limits, abundance calls for a new understanding, beyond accumulation. I look toward what already surrounds us (the overlooked, the seasonal, the local) as a different kind of richness.

Staying grounded, present, and whole is itself a form of response to the metacrisis. I approach making as a way to remain present within these conditions. Through slowness, repetition, and material attention, my work opens spaces where beauty and fragility coexist, and where small acts can shift perception.