Past Exhibitions

Tree Talk

2022 Tree Talk Show at Twin Pines Art Center, Belmont

Tree Talk - Poems in the Air

Intrigued by research showing that trees communicate with each other via their root systems to nurture and protect each other, I embarked on a project to learn more about trees and forests. By absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen, trees help prevent global warming and climate change and provide the atmosphere that makes life on Earth possible.

Rainforests being clear cut purely for profit and the loss of old growth redwoods right here in California due to greed or wildfires caused by climate change saddens me. I wanted to express my emotional reaction to these issues visually with my photography so I experimented by manipulating colors in photos to show trees as voids and/or presenting them upside down with their crowns appearing as roots. But there is a caveat that I write about in my closing paragraph.

The resulting photos are somewhat strange but seductively beautiful to draw people in to take a closer look and question “What is going on here” They are meant to appeal to viewers on a subliminal emotional level and entice them to learn more about my photos and thus learn more about the importance of trees and the threat to life on Earth from deforestation.

To further emphasize the enormity of the loss of trees and to convey a sense of being in a forest, I present photos large-scale on heavily textured fabric 6 feet x 3 ½ feet either vertical or horizontal to appeal to all kinds of people to look more closely at them in this unusual format for photography. They are not just for people who are interested in photography who go to museums and galleries. I want this project to be able to be exhibited in other public spaces where they can be seen by everyday people in everyday situations so more people can experience them.

But, for a more conventional presentation but not completely traditional, I present photos on metallic photo paper. The metallic photo paper accentuates the light values in the images so they have an eerie glow, also drawing people in to take a closer look. These strangely beautiful images are meant to open hearts and minds.

I want beauty to be the vehicle that draws people in to learn more about these issues. I don’t want to dwell on the negativity of loss. I want my work to show that life can return to forests after devastation and that there is hope for the future if we act proactively now. So, instead of looking at the light trunks as voids, I hope to change perceptions to see them as glowing hope for the future. It’s my goal to use my strange photography presented in unconventional ways to draw attention to these important issues confronting humankind as well as to present exceptional art accessible and understandable by all.

Tree Talk Photos

Palo Alto Main Library Show images for Tree Talk

Seas & Trees

Seas & Trees at Gallery Route One, Point Reyes Station with Anitta Toivio

Our work is about the environment with an emphasis on oceans. All life began in the sea millions of years ago. Our bodies are made up mostly of water. We are all products of the sea. This crosses all borders and unites all peoples as one humankind.

We are a multi-cultural collaboration, an artist from Finland and an artist from California. Our artmaking philosophy is to awaken these inborn deep ties to nature, the oceans, and to each other, and to eliminate borders between peoples. We are all human and we are at a crossroads of environmental chaos where we as artists feel that we must draw attention to this crisis that needs immediate attention if life on earth is to survive.

We are doing terrible things to the earth. Our art focuses on beauty and intriguing visuals to get viewers attention to delve deeper into what we are trying to say on behalf of humanity. Our art is meant to appeal to the collective memory that lives deep inside of each of us passed down intuitively from the generations that have come before us. We call this “the landscape in us.”

Our video “The Landscape in Us” expresses this by projecting the waves of the Pacific Ocean onto an organza scrim in front of a large-scale 7 1/2’ x 10’ photo of the expansive forests in Finland. At one time, oceans covered all of earth and then land rose from the oceans and human life emerged. The philosophy behind this work is that the same waters that formed the Pacific Ocean once covered Finland from which the forests emerged. Thus, there’s a commonality, a connection not only between us as collaborating artists from two cultures in two parts of the world, but a deep internal connection between peoples all over the world. The repetitive motion of the waves in our video is meant to draw viewers in and awaken these deep-seated collective memories inside all of us. Humankind is one. We are all in this together. We must all work to save the oceans and the forests if life is to survive on earth.

Our art is experimental and meant to provide viewers with an experience that is more than just viewing art. We continue to stretch what we do by working with new technologies that can better express via art the important non-verbal messages that we are trying to convey. We use many media to do this: Video, photography, drawing, painting, sculpture, sound, 3-D pen, working with seaweed, eco-prints, lumen prints, cyanotypes and photos on large pieces of fabric, etc. Our installations include work on ceilings and floors as well as walls and pedestals, and performance art such as a dramatic dry ice in water performance/demo that emulates how the oceans were formed and live “emotional portrait” painting.

Our philosophy is also to make visible with our art the invisible: how nature repeats its forms from the smallest quark to the largest galaxies - animate and inanimate.