I’m an artist.
Creative writing
Literary art has always existed for me in juxtaposition with other forms of inquiry and meaning-making, specifically ecology. I can use the powers of observation and empathy to discover or imagine how personal and natural histories resonate with each other. This helps me examine and appreciate so many facets of life and feel whole, as part of a community.
Nominated for a Pushcart Prize, my prose has appeared in over 15 journals and anthologies. I have published poetry and literary criticism in multiple venues, earning artist residencies and other recognition.
recent publications
“Superfund site, Butte, Montana.” Broadsided Press. January 2023.
“Realignment”; “Beginning Swimming for Non-Swimmers.” Peregrine Vol. XXXVI, 2022.
“(When) a hard look at a holy thing (softens).” Cordite Poetry Review 105 (2022).
“Writing [Rub the callus].” Burningword Literary Journal 102 (April 2022).
“Carrier.” HerStry. 21 May 2021.
“Feeding feeling.” Poet Lore 115 (2020).
“Cause for celebration.” Baltimore Review. Winter 2020.
“In which x does and does not eclipse y.” Witness Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2, Winter 2019.
“Roots and rhizomes: On dichotomies false and formative.” Route 7 Review. 7 December 2019
“Mothing.” New South. 27 May 2019.
“The Schoolteacher awaiting her pupils”; “We counted waves by sevens not knowing which was ‘one.’” Terrain: A Journal of the Built + Natural Environments. 25 December 2018.
“Aesthetics.” The Pinch 36.1 (2016).
Seeking publication
Beginning Swimming for Non-Swimmers, full-length poetry manuscript
A Gentler Shovel: Haiku from 150 years of iconic American environmental writing, anthology of 440 originally composed haiku. Book proposal available upon request. You can read sample work from the manuscript and my process description in Heron Tree, Volume 8 and “The Canon’s Undercurrent: A Survey of Haiku Aesthetics in American Nature Writing” in Modern Haiku 48.1.
Paper and Book Arts
All engaged art projects have at their core an accessible process and product and the breaking-down and creating-new cycle that promotes healing. My papermaking and bookbinding projects repurpose locally sourced materials to support recycling and place-based community building.
My blank journals are for sale at Made Local Marketplace in Santa Rosa, Calif.
recent projects
Journals to benefit sequoia groves burned in 2020 & 2021
50% of sales will be donated to the KNP Complex Fire Recovery Fund
Artist Jill Savory created the “Sequoia Burning” linocut during the riots after the murder of George Flyod. She is a printmaker based in Virginia and at phillianmorton on Etsy. The sequoia stamp is from Beeswax Rubber Stamps.
Sequoia Burning, $35
handmade paper covers
original linocut print by Jill Savory
5 x 7"
70 pages of Pacon Recycled Drawing Paper, 60 lb. (good for all dry media, recyclable)
hemp or nylon-blend thread
bookbinder's long stitch used for the spine
50% of sale goes to the Sequoia Parks Conservancy’s KNP Complex Fire Recovery Fund
Sequoiadendron giganteum, $18
repurposed stock paper covers
decorative sheet (green) from banana plant pulp
stamp by Beeswax Rubber Stamps
5.5 x 8.5”
24 pages of repurposed cotton-linen blend papers, 24 lb.
nylon-blend thread
bookbinder’s chain stitch used for the spine
50% of sale goes to the Sequoia Parks Conservancy’s KNP Complex Fire Recovery Fund
Weeds = Words
Artist-in-Residence, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, August 2017.
My art comes from the intersection of my identities as a scientist and an artist. As a vegetation ecologist, I worked with the National Park Service for five summers pulling weeds in several western parks. As a writer, I developed an interest in making paper from plants after years of filling journals with my messy script. Like the transitive theory in geometry that states if A=B and B=C, then A=C, this artwork logically connects my two paths: If weeds = paper and paper = words, then weeds = words.
For this installation, I processed the inner bark and leaves of non-native, invasive plants collected in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and my neighborhood in California. I first cooked and beat the plant material into a pulp to break down its original structure. Then I diluted the pulp with water to disperse the separated fibers. Lastly, I pulled a screen through the diluted solution to catch the plant fibers in a new arrangement and make a new structure—the thin, flat sheets you see here. Some fibers maintained their strong bonds despite my efforts and could not be smoothly integrated into sheets. On the sheets I gave the plants the words we commonly use to describe them.
After seeing non-native, invasive plants transformed into entities of color and texture, it was hard for me to identify any of them in negative terms; it was hard for me to mark a unique, intricate thing with a label that was limiting. Yet these labels are the same words we often use to describe people who migrate, establish, and assert their presence in a community.
“It’s a brave piece of work, and I applaud you for the time and careful thought that has gone into its presentation. ”
I’ve wondered if people have said foreign or aggressive about me as I’ve moved around the country for jobs and family. But I had never let myself voice the words as if they were my own identifiers until I started working on this art project. Doing so made me more sensitive to saying them in any circumstance about any plant or person. This difficulty is at the core of this artwork for me: the art invites us to reconsider the identifiers we use for ourselves and others. In the process, it allows us to reconsider our ideas of community and belonging.