Rend

Artist Statement

*"This suits me for a pasture; that’s my park;
We must have clay, lime, gravel, granite-ledge,
And misty lowland, where to go for peat."*¹

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem Hametrey explores the often exploitative relationship that Western cultures maintain with the earth. In our pursuit of dominion and commodification, we imagine ourselves separate from nature—yet our existence remains bound to its forces. This flawed perspective manifests in both awe-inspiring and catastrophic ways:

*"They added ridge to valley, brook to pond,
And sighed for all that bounded their domain;"*²

Writing these words 173 years ago, Emerson could not have foreseen factory farming, mountaintop removal, or nuclear energy, yet even in his time, he recognized a fundamental flaw in humanity’s relationship with the land.

This reflection serves as the conceptual foundation of REND. Each piece in this body of work examines a different facet of our distorted connection with the environment. I draw upon imagery that embodies the human imprint on natural spaces, distilling these interventions into their most fundamental actions: scratching in the dirt, splitting wood, dividing and rearranging, cutting and burning. These gestures materialize as sculptural works—artifacts of action—that capture the physicality of my hands and the proportions of my body.

By juxtaposing materials that reflect the tension between the organic and the industrial—clay and steel, wood and plastic—I invite the viewer to engage with the material language of these works. Through this dialogue, REND offers a space for contemplation on our role within the natural world, questioning whether our interventions are acts of creation or destruction.