Finder
Finder, 2020
Screenprinted artist's book, edition of 180, published by Kayrock Screenprinting, Brooklyn, NY
9” x 12”
In Finder, images of fern specimens from the George Vasey Herbarium layer and mingle with sixteenth century botanical engravings appropriated from John Gerard’s Herbal and with selections from Fern Finder, a contemporary pocket field guide to North American ferns. Finder locates its subject within a compost-like mixture of visual languages and aesthetic practices. The idealized and colonizing language of early modern engraving, the utilitarian generalization of diagrams, and the decaying plant forms and collection data of herbarium pages unmake and remake each other as abstraction, effecting a forest like space that invites consideration of how human order is imposed on nature.
Ghosts
Ghosts, 2016
Screenprinted artist's book, edition of 200, published by Kayrock Screenprinting, Brooklyn, NY
9”x 12”
Ghosts is made from a selection of images derived from plant specimen in Illinois State University's Vasey Herbarium, an archive of plants from across the globe, some dating to the 19th century. Each plant is a unique figure, collected by a particular person, bearing the trace of a place and moment in time. Through layered, intensified color, echoed shapes, and inclusion of the incidental marks and text describing and identifying the specimens, I wanted to highlight the forms of the plants and amplify the elegance of how they are organized, arranged, and described within the herbarium.
Fern Portal
Fern Portal, 2020
Signed and numbered edition of 180, published by Kayrock Screenprinting, Brooklyn, NY
5 color screenprint on 100lb French
18” x 24”
Fern Portal uses images derived from Illinois State University's Vasey Herbarium, an archive of plants from across the globe, some dating to the 19th century. Images of fern specimen, collected at various places and times and kept within the herbarium’s organized taxonomy for study are layered, merged, inverted, and reanimated using a color palette that combines subtle sheens and neutral tones with flickering moments of neon intensity.
Accordion books
Foliate: edition and monoprints