I have always reached for seeds. I grew up in a science fiction-like enclave--a manufactured oasis, green-grassy-irrigated suburban and citrus-dotted orchard--of the Sonoran desert in Phoenix, Arizona and some of my earliest memories involve mesquite pods dangling from tree branches, learning that tiny dots protruding from ripe prickly pear fruit will one day grow another nectar-bearing cactus. Drawings of plants covered my notebooks all through school, filling the margins and creeping onto the page. Capturing the shadows, impressions, indents, hollows, textures, and contours of how photosynthesis touches and transforms our lives has been a winding path I have followed through tactile-instinct and intuition. By tracing the rhizomes and roots of these ideas, and finding branching questions that lead me to unexpected places, I constantly find myself staring into the leafy wonder of what are we doing here anyways?

Rock, paper, scissors--My artistic practice resembles this simple game. I find myself unearthing webs, connections, and layers, tangled in the complexity of time, scale, and possibility. Rearranging these scraps of meaning through repeated covering and uncovering, drawing and erasing, cutting and pasting, slow and then fast, is a way to explore the relationships between chance and choice, for the intertwined fibers of our existence to slowly emerge across the page and capture the shape of stories almost unnoticed. I want to find the stories that reveal the layers of connection that weave art, science, and community together.

Through tactile and textured exploration, I seek the imaginative possibility of collective and individual observation. Can we reimagine a more inclusive and accessible field guide that has space for our species-specificity and also our fictions, feelings, and dreams? Where else can dichotomous keys lead us if we follow their questions to unexpected places?