M - Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

impetus for us to change. These changes are often more
visible in cities. Symptomatic of this rise in consciousness
is the shifting effort towards valorizing local urban ecosystems.
These resistant environments have historically
been seen as unnatural. Urban parks, feral areas and
brown-fields don’t easily fit inside our occidental
‘wilderness’ construct.
Several of my past projects have focused on
these seemingly ‘austere’ landscapes. For example, the
2000/2004 work Losing Ground dealt with the rapidlychanging
ecology of New York City’s Jamaica Bay. This
vast wetland contains thousands of marsh islands that
filter water and create habitats for numerous species.
Due to both natural and anthropogenic factors these
islands are sinking at an incredible rate of between 40 to
60 acres per year. The project involved collaborating
with scientists, educators, bird-watchers, students and
members of the public to study the bay and create an
ecological art installation at a local community center.
During the four years of work on the project, we saw
firsthand the disappearance of many of these islands - it
was remarkable and horrifying. The field data we
collected was submitted to both environmental and
scientific groups to help solicit for governmental support
of remediation. Currently restoration efforts are ongoing
in Jamaica Bay.
Does this have implications for a substantial
environmental paradigm shift?
As more than half the world’s population has shifted to
occupy cities, we have become an urban species. The
remaining islands of ‘wilderness’ are becoming our new
suburbia. As Tim Flannery has called it we have all
become ‘Weather Makers.’ We all are trying to come to
terms with what this means. Most of us are much more
conscious of our impact now and want changes.
A shift is already happening. When former US
president G. W. Bush spoke in China about hybrid
automobiles it was symptomatic of this shift. It is coming
from furthered natural resource depletion and economic
necessity as well as increased public concern and
pressure on governments to implement change.
Reflective of this cultural shift is the increasing number of
artists currently addressing environmental issues globally.
It is a kind of positive feedback loop. Artists are
generating ecological projects in a global culture more
sensitive to environmental issues.
Barbara Matilsky in her book Fragile Ecologies
discussed how artists can implement real world change
by increasing popular awareness. Artists can bring
environmental issues to the social foreground making the
public aware. This is followed by increased popular
concern, which can then push for changes in government
policies. Art increasingly is helping to drive an
environmental paradigm shift.
Do your discoveries of ‘deformed nature’ act as
metaphor or litmus paper for a rising sense of
disharmony and psychological unease felt in
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Westernized urban society?
My work is the product of environmental disharmony as
a social construct and as a biological reality. Growing up
in a post Silent Spring America an eco-psychological
unease was prevalent in many popular books and films.
Soylent Green, Logan’s Run, Prophecy, Food for the Gods
and others presented distopian visions of a near future.
For better or worse they helped shape a cultural vision
of landscape for a generation. Large-scale catastrophes
such as Love Canal and Chernobyl embedded a sense of
urgency. This has been reaffirmed through continued
news of rapid extinctions and climate change. Without
question, the fear of future environmental calamity is
causing social concern. Currently some authors have
begun to compare this environmental unease to posttraumatic
stress syndrome on a massive scale.
Your projects involve collecting samples of
malformed frogs and toads to preserve them in
jars, much in the manner of Victorian scientists.
This creates a complex paradox for, if the death
of the subject is the desired intention of the
artist in order to create an artwork, as discussed
by Mark Dion in Some Notes Towards a
Manifesto for Artists Working With or About
the Living World, 2000, how can the work also
ask the viewer to proactively address issues
relating to the survival of the same species?
My intention is to engage. In the sculptural series Styx,
each tiny animal is carefully post-fixed cleared and
stained (please see images) and displayed on large dark
structures - to resemble fallen obelisks. The specimens
are small, out of our normal human-scale for bodily
association, but through precisely illuminated glass dishes
they become the ‘light’ and focal point. Viewed up close
they resemble gems or the stained-glass windows found
in some cathedrals. There is something familiar about
them, enchanting but terrible and otherworldly. The
series was titled after the mythological river that moved
between the worlds of the Living and the Dead in a
poem by the poet KuyDelair.
The paradox mentioned in your question
appears in Styx. It is my artistic response to the complex
sensations derived from finding the abnormal frogs in
nature. Involving the actually specimens in this work is
not meant to be read in the first degree. It asks the
viewer to re-question their behavior and approach
towards the environment.
For the photographs, I use a direct imaging
process of scanning (referencing the tradition of
photogravure in natural sciences). Also, because of the
remarkable details that can be captured through this new
technique. Again the specimens are chemically altered so
they look almost like x-rays. This enables a level of
abstraction. Aesthetically, the colors of the dyed tissues
are vibrant- very direct in contrast to the skin, which is
semi-transparent and meant to be ephemeral. They are
printed to the scale of a human-toddler to invoke