ecological art
theatrical design
installation & studio art
nature’s play
about me
Nature’s Play
An ecological restoration performed over three years in Palmer Woods, Ithaca NY.
2022 - present
A series of playful responses to overlooked land history on the overgrown ghost of a golf course “belonging” to Cornell University. Over a year of intense stewardship, I sculpted brush piles from non-native plants as animal habitats for human eyes. After a series of performances full of play, dance, food, planting, and meditation, the woven structures were left to shelter diverse animal life as the non-native species return: a living memorial to ecological imbalance.
Click for more about Nature’s Play
Parasitic Squatters
Site-specific installation in a French barn: dust, blackberry, bamboo, apple, mistletoe, manure, glass, wood, rope, wire
Varying dimensions across two floors
2024
Blackberry brambles overtook a barn unused for 40 years. Self-grafted balls of mistletoe weighed down an apple tree. A robust stand of bamboo needed thinning. Assembled from a sample of naturalized species, this playground explores the distinctions of material growth in the post-agricultural setting. After decades of natural transformation, the Parasitic Squatters have a new home.
Viscum album (European mistletoe) on an apple branch
Itadori Teahouse II
Japanese Knotweed (Itadori), hemp, reclaimed wood, soil, pulp composite (cotton, biochar, cornstarch, straw, knotweed)
7’W x 12’H x 7’ D
The Soil Factory, Ithaca NY
2024 - 2025
The Soil Factory is a thriving laboratory-playground for ecological art and soil science, conducting experiments in sustainable reuse, human waste management, and re-wilding its post-industrial site. This pavilion-in-progress takes the dimensions of a four-mat Japanese teahouse, situating the visitor in the ground and under the open oculus. A native plant medicine garden and food forest lead up to this out-of-place cube made of out-of-place knotweed, an extremely renewable material. In Spring 2025, I will install panels of composite knotweed/cotton pulp board as the “tatami” flooring and paper walls, and activate the space with a Itadori tea ceremony.
A Line Made By Walking
Woven mats and knotweed composites drying, to be installed after winter
Itadori Teahouse I
Japanese Knotweed (Itadori), bush honeysuckle, bush privet, stream
9’ L x 4’3” H x 5’-2” D
The Soil Factory, Ithaca NY
2023
This meditative “teahouse” made from invasive Japanese knotweed is woven into the form of a squat toilet. Itadori literally means “pain remover” in Japanese. Within this vessel built into a flowing stream, I served a medicinal knotweed tea and invited audiences to relieve themselves: a truly circular construction.
Brandon taking a break with some itadori tea
Entering the knotweed patch toward the hidden stream
A sign from the heavens
The Post-Modern Prometheus
Site-specific installation from shale and fire
Eternal Flame Falls, Orchard Park NY
9” W x 14” H x 10” D
2024
An ephemeral framing of a singular site in Western NY, during a trip with my extraordinary friend and collaborator, Adam Bruynesteyn. The day prior, we had been captivated by the controversial Davis-Besse nuclear cooling tower in central Ohio. Miniscule in comparison, this natural phenomenon -- a gas flame behind a curtain of water surrounded by ice-age geology framed by mossy trees -- was infinitely more important.
Click for Bruynesteyn’s extended cut
Cave
Quercus Ruba (red oak) and Fagus Sylvatica (common elm) downed by wind
9’ W x 8.5’ H x 12’ D
2023, Indre France
Hashi
Bambusa Vulgaris (common bamboo) cleared by mountain stewards, hemp
11’ W x 8’ H x 7’ D
2019, Kyoto Japan
Doris’ Partridge
Syringa Vulgaris (common lilac) downed by wind, hemp, latex paint
13’ W x 17’ H x 10’ D
2020, Shushan NY
The Sandbox: A Meditation on Japonisme dans la Campagne
Site-specific installation in a French barn: dust, cow manure, wood, debris, stone
14’W x 10’D x 8’H
2023 - 2024
Read the press release
Mama | ‘ɱɐɱɐ | まま
Mixed media sculpture: site-specific vegetation, polluted lily pads, American Standard™ toilet, Walmart™ orchid, “I love mommy, I love daddy” polyester fabric, Roll Reserve by Mainstays™, acrylic, canvas, soil, stream water
26” W x 62” H x 28” D
2020 - 2023
A proposal for a new vegetative Dadaism. Mama is the battleground for a living “ikebana” of wildflowers. In the museum, the suffocating lily pads excreted absorbed pollutants. Left to grow in the woods its plant inhabitants were forcibly harvested, the sculpture took new form, cleared of meaning. An accompanying essay was published in "The New Twenties Issue II: Dada," an online magazine.
Read the original text here
a-Roma
Acrylic, ceramic, cotton, glass, metal grate, police tape, wood pallet, native wormwood, and perfume from olive oil, orange peel, and wormwood
71” W x 114” H x 55” D
2021
Phragment
Digging a way for native species through a swamp of invasive phragmites.
A durational performance from sunrise to sunset as an intervention for the Marshy Garden rewilding project by Brandon Hoak and Ash Ferlito.
5:55 am to 8:11 pm, May 6th, 2023, The Soil Factory, Ithaca NY
murky pool in the little gorge behind my apartment