My work uses various interdisciplinary mediums to offer a visual and socially engaged language for communicating the devastating impacts invasive plant species have on native habitats, biodiversity, and climate change. Though most often found in or immediately near urban environments, invasive species are known to establish in sensitive native environments by way of human transport, whether due to intentional transportation of them (such as for ornamental purpose) or by way of their highly successful dispersal adaptations.
Through photography, my work highlights native habitats, the diversity of expansive California flora as a global biodiversity hotspot, specific lesser-known species within it, and the environmental damage wrought by human behaviors through extraction, negligence, and their byproducts. California is a global biodiversity hotspot. The sites I document within it are often in deep wilderness areas requiring long-distance, specialized transportation and many hours of hiking in challenging terrain, paired with a strong understanding of the extremely diverse habitats across California, each of their unique seasonalities, and the plant species behaviors within them. Thereby, environmental occurrences, both beneficial and destructive, are made more visible regardless of a viewer’s physical accessibility to them or their familiarity with their varied and specific phenological behaviors (timing of germination, blooming, fruiting, senescing, dormancy, etc).
This use of photography is essential for its ability to articulate real plant specimens and their sites as more accessible encounters to viewers. However, the format on its own simultaneously disconnects viewers through its digitization and flattening. To connect these places and vulnerable species more closely with the human behaviors and invasive plant species that threaten them, my work utilizes a heavy focus on the visceral, tangible, and interactive.
Through social practice projects, I use education on natural art mediums made from California invasive plant species to educate the general public about native and invasive plant species. Through the appeal of unconventional, environmentally supportive, DIY materials, community members are often introduced to ecological concepts for the first time, paving way for increased community consideration of what the roles are played by plants in all locations they are found.
Understanding the critical influence of climate change on biodiversity loss, including the success and subsequent damaging impact of invasive plant species, can too easily be lost in its complexity. Our ability to work toward mitigating them on a collective level means building scaffolding for all community members, across all tiers of cultural and socioeconomic strata, toward a stronger cultural literacy.