unfolding landscapes
As a landscape architect, artist and educator, I have made ‘landscapes’ in a variety of ways- conceptual, speculative, representational, fabricated and real or built. Among the modes are a series of ‘visual books’ I made to convey my personal readings and interpretations of specific landscapes –an abandoned dump, a glacially formed gorge, a dynamic shoreline. These works translate, record and convey landscape experiences and also aim to provoke dialogue concerning human-nature interconnectivity and complexity.
Landscapes are like unfolding books with complex ecological and cultural stories to tell. They teem with interanimating layers and complexity and are bound by time, change, materials, phenomena, activities and meanings. Through and within their pages we venture, experience and encounter. And through our many acts of lifting, lowering, moving, pausing, touching and retracting we inhabit them, and they inhabit us.
Each individual book or ensemble offers a personal reading and representation of how a particular landscape or place discloses itself, becomes known and more fully revealed or seen by me. Through its intentionally interactive form, each book also becomes a site or place of discovery for those interacting and experiencing it. Its form and structure aim to overcome the barriers and biases inherent in single and fixed image viewing as well as more closely mirror the experiential and narrative qualities of places and landscapes.
