To create these photographs I use invasive plants foraged from heavily urban and high traffic areas. After collecting approximately 200 pieces, I arrange the plant materials following a sequence based on the Golden Ratio, specifically a spiral that grows logarithmically by a factor of 1.618, also known as Phi.  This proportion is used in art and architecture by ancient civilizations and is also found in nature as in an ocean’s wave or the spiral of a galaxy. Using an office scanner inverted, I then scan the arrangement in sections. In post-production I digitally blend dozens of scans to create each final artwork. No two objects are duplicated, each object is unique.

 

By taking common natural materials, I am looking at what is tremendously ubiquitous from an individual and macro perspective. The natural materials I use are plants that grow wild in coastal British Columbia and can be found both in forests and alongside the man-made materials in concrete wastelands where heavily manicured patches of nature have been dropped in, such as parking lots near mega-mall department stores.

 

Rather than look at our landscape as a whole, I look at its minutiae: specifically the wild and weed flora and fauna. My art questions the significance these objects have in our landscape. Weeds, for example, are removed because they “litter” our lawns even though they are valuable to pollinators.  While some of these common plants are considered invasive, such as Oxeye Daisies which decrease the biodiversity of the region they inhabit, they are also important to pollinators though frequently mown down in favor of a manicured lawn void of diversity.

 

The arrangement of the plants is informed by the plant itself.  The floral disc of the Oxeye Daisy (the central yellow part) is the same spiral arrangement as all the flowers arranged in the final artwork.  The tight cluster of Dandelions mimics the dense, spring growth of Dandelions on our lawns.  Though Dandelions are not considered invasive according to the Invasive Species Council of BC, they are still often treated as such.