I grew up catching salamanders and swimming in rivers, walking around ferns taller than I was and picking blackberries bigger than my eyes. I climbed trees and played tag in full moonlight. As a grownup (sort of), I play in the desert and work in conservation. I look up to old saguaros and get way too excited about tiny flowers and how ming-boggling our interconnectedness is.
Wild Rootage is an attempt to visually represent the connectedness of living things and our environment, to increase appreciation and understanding of the natural systems that we are not separate from and cannot live without. My main body of work is cyanotypes, with film photography and sometimes zines thrown in the mix. The majority of my work is focused on ecology, botany, ecological grief, and climate change, specifically in the Sonoran Desert and Arizona.
About Me
“That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.” - Aldo Leopold
To make cyanotypes, I mix a liquid sensitizer solution of iron salts. I gently brush the solution onto paper, taking my time to get an even coat. I wait until the paper is bone dry, usually a day later. The paper is now light sensitive and kept in the dark until I'm ready to make a print. In a dimly lit area, I arrange plants or a negative on the paper. Then, I carry the paper out into the sun.
Sunlight changes everything. The fluorescent green chemistry shift to a strange greenish grey and tones of blue. I wait for the perfect moment to pull the print out of the light. A rinse in cool water washes away what was unexposed, and the color shifts to the classic cyanotype blue.
