In my most recent prints and sculptures, I’ve been pursuing the idea that an invisible landscape of communication exists all around us. Wireless networks, email inboxes, voicemails, radio and t.v. signals are all examples of the types of communications that I aim to give material representation. I’m interested in these particular forms because they are sent to all realms of our environment; to the ends of the earth, under the seas, and even into space. I imagine telecommunications as a final frontier in the human invasion of the natural world; invisible, moving along electromagnetic waves, our data and messages are sent places that, as humans, we may never go.

In new works, I plan to explore these ideas through a number of frameworks: telecommunications as an invasion of undisturbed parts of our environment; telecommunications as the “next frontier” for mankind; and the relationship of these ideas to American ideals of technology.

In viewing telecommunications as an invasion of undisturbed parts of our environment, I will examine Leo Marx’s concept of “the machine in the garden.” Marx discusses this idea as a repeated theme in American literature, in which a pastoral scene is disrupted by the sudden appearance of a large, menacing machine. In recent works, I’ve been dealing with the contrast between complex telecommunications machines and objects from the natural world. As these communications are invisible and ethereal, I construct the installations out of paper, discussing the contradiction of a thin, delicate material as a representation of a strong, mechanical object, and simultaneously as a representation of a material of mass communication, based in the history of print.

In upcoming works, I plan to focus on objects and constructions pertaining to message transmission and associated with a typical American landscape, such as vast roads, electrical towers, cell phone towers, and power lines. I will also focus on natural elements of the American landscape, such as tumbleweeds and tornadoes. I’m interested in the history of American technology, and how machines and technology have been perceived as both a positive force of progress, and as a negative force of destruction and immorality. Examples of the technological sublime, in constructions such as the Golden Gate Bridge and the Apollo rocket launchings, will inform the construction of the machines in the works, dealing with the overarching sense of power in man-made constructions. How these natural and man-made objects within a landscape can coincide, and speak about our new, electromagnetically charged atmosphere, will be the focus of the new works.