​Just off the trail on a hike, I encountered a moose hunkered down in the grass, surrounded by a group of curious hikers who were boldly encroaching on her space. When I quickly turned away, a man called after me, “Don’t worry! She’s so cute and gentle.” It struck me that a 1,000-pound wild animal, surrounded by her most dangerous predator, could be reduced to “cute” and “gentle.” 

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Silk Flowers and Stuffed Bears is a series of works on paper using found nature imagery—stickers, collaged photos, rubber stamps, shaped hole punches, and clip art—to explore how we flatten plants, animals, and natural phenomena into symbols that mask their complexity. Synthetic materials further distance these images from the natural systems they represent.  

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Like specimen collecting, my process gathers and arranges these mass-produced images. Instead of revealing biodiversity and richness, this collection exposes how we can simplify entire ecosystems into a sticker sheet or a clip art page labeled “Fish,” “Flowers,” or “Safari.” These symbols shape how we see real plants and animals, taming them in our minds, the way the hiker’s words tamed the moose and blinded him to the threat they posed to

each other. ​