the artist


I use a camera to reveal the beauty and drama of what appears to be an ordinary world.

The tiny flower pictured here is a Wood Sorrel blossom, otherwise know as yellow clover, otherwise known as a weed. I've trampled and poisoned these plants for years. In 2016, I participated in a Flickr photo challenge theme, "Smaller than a coin." I photographed this tiny blossom through a macro lens and found it to be incredibly beautiful, complex and fragile. I set it up on a stack of dimes with a dark background and dramatic lighting. In my eyes, it was no longer a weed deserving of destruction.

"There are no weeds. There are only plants that people don't understand." - Martin Dohrn, wildlife filmmaker and creator of the PBS documentary My Garden of a Thousand Bees

In 2015, after years of taking photographs, I broke out the owner's manual of my camera and turned serious attention to photo editing software to learn how to create fine art. At the time, I was homeschooling a beautiful and brilliant boy who also had some big attention deficit challenges. As a result, I spent much time learning photography in my West Michigan backyard. At the same time, I was also learning the effects of agribusiness on our food supply and environment because of the effects of chemicals in said food supply on an ADD brain and my world changed. Weeds are not useless. Bugs are not pests. There is a place and purpose for everything (well, except maybe camel crickets). There is beauty and design in the most ordinary of things. There is a story. Even the lowly Wood Sorrel. Truly appreciating that started with macro photography.

So, now, I have a yard full of clover, dandelions and wild violets. I don't kill spiders. I see the extraordinary in the ordinary world and seek to present it in a creative and artistic way. 

 

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