Ecosystems
My recent body of work experiments with and explores concepts of climate change and anxiety within constructed closed environments. As a form, the closed ecosystem necessitates an understanding of biological and ecological systems and the balance of elements needed to create a stable equilibrium—concepts deeply relevant to our current climate crisis. This compulsion to preserve during a looming crisis recalls the parable of Noah and the Great Flood telling of a last-ditch effort, despite humanity, to protect the natural world during an apocalypse brought about by environmental disaster. Floating and submerged vessels containing microenvironments balance a sense of beauty and fragility—carefully titrated organic interactions protected only by a thin layer of glass. Their forms suggest both the sentimentality of messages in bottles and safeguarded specimens like the Svalbard Seed Vault.