Artwork > 2015 - 2017 - The New Aloha

I work with collage, photography and sculpture examining society’s proclivity to equate nature with consumption, affluence and capitalism. In my series, The New Aloha, I use photography’s ability to replace ownership; acquiring postcards of beautiful places and combining them with magazine images of expensive unattainable objects. I create surrealistic landscapes, pairing the images with titles and text lifted from the back of the postcards, fusing that text with the descriptions of the featured opulent items. The imagery, titles and text become an awkward compression, conflating desire and ambivalence. My work explores the mechanics of photographic representation, fantasy and authenticity and is influenced by California history, the paradoxes of a suburban upbringing and my increasingly complicated relationship with nature.