Following the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of the police, I have seen Philly (and many other places) mobilize to fight against racism and a justice system that is not doing its job.

Since the pandemic started I’ve been thinking a lot more about my personal impact in the world - how I contribute to capitalism and how detrimental that can be. I think about how I’ve always thought of Amazon as a necessary evil. And then seeing how one person can gain so much wealth when the bulk of the world is struggling - makes you realize it’s not a necessary evil. I can find other ways. But I can find other ways because I now have the time to do so. Working less has provided me the time to invest in my community, to grow vegetables in my garden, and make hundreds of masks to give away to the community.

I have been working on this project I’m calling Tree Connection, which is mostly an installation exploring how people are social/romantic and how that might relate to trees, revolving around 3 themes: living room, state park visitor center, and tv game show. This blog post is an attempt to work through some of those themes. (and this one doesn’t have anything to do with nature)

I’ve been using these three spaces as three constructed social spaces, at different scales. Living rooms are at the smallest scale — living rooms are often occupied by small, intimate groups — people you know well, family members, lovers, etc. I often associate living rooms with awkward small talk, forced social time with family, or illicit teenage make-out sessions while pretending to watch television.

I’ve been working on this giant project that has three themes — Living Room, TV Game Show, and State Park Visitor’s Center. I would like to use this little blog space to explore these themes in a little more depth. Beginning with game shows!

The fall semester of my second year of grad school is in full swing now — and I’m finally making the time do a little summer re-cap here!

Last weekend I went to Baltimore to deinstall this show that I had at the 4 Hour Day Lutherie in Baltimore. The show was basically a re-cap of much of the work I made in my first year of grad school.

A zine exploring some basic research on mountains, proposals on how I might care for mountains, and what my relationship to mountains is.

Last semester I looked at a lineage of women using their bodies in the land. I compared the way these women use their bodies, how their backgrounds and methodologies change the work, and how viewers can relate to them. How does blending in to one’s environment speak to the way we negotiate our identities in and through space? What is the relation between self and environment? How do technological extensions of the self enable and disable relationships with the environment? In this post I will trace my trajectory from studying these artists to my own experimentation with digital technology in an effort to answer these questions.

I can’t believe I haven’t written about this zine yet! Created in 2018 after I had moved to Philly, I was looking to find some recommendations for two of my favorite foods: donuts and bagels. Some men were not super helpful but most of them gave me honest and useful recommendations. This was to the point where many people would recommend a spot and nothing more. As a result, I only went on dates with two of the men. Perhaps someone in the world could successfully get both recommendations and dates from Tinder but I found it easier to talk about bagels and donuts ;) Enjoy these snippets from it! If interested, you can buy the zine from my shop and I’ll mail it along!