"I acquired a birch section from a mill in Escanaba, MI, a place in state of declined industry, soft beauty and jagged past. As I pondered how to acknowledge the rampant deforestation of the white pine, the brutality of indigenous genocide and the economic cavities left in these places after all the resources were tapped, I realized that as much as we would like to bill the present as different, the future as new, they are inextricably tied to the past. Even physically split in two, there is no way to severe oneself from what has happened. We must see the past, touch it, know its story in order to honestly repair the built up scars of our interior and exterior landscapes."
2019
birch