art for the insatiably curious
Each photo in the Beachcombing series documents the things I found beautiful or intriguing on a particular beach on a particular day, forming a set of stylized beach portraits.
Beachcombing is fundamentally a treasure hunt, an emotional and old-fashioned form of exploration that depends on serendipity, suspense, and glee. Identifying my finds can require research in marine biology, glass-making history, geology, chemistry and other disciplines. The resulting photos look vaguely scientific, with echos of pressed botany specimens and Linnean classification diagrams. In a way they are. But where most scientific illustrations present answers, these photos are a way of articulating my questions.
Bio:
I received my B.A. in Art History and Asian Studies at Vassar College in 1989. As part of the degree requirements, I studied Japanese language and woodblock printing at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan. After a brief period at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, I worked as an antiquarian book dealer in San Francisco, and then earned a Masters in Landscape Architecture and Historic Preservation at the University of Virginia in 1997. I have practiced landscape architecture on Mount Desert Island since 1998.
I am particularly interested in the intersection of science and art, whether at the scale of an engineered landscape or at that of a carefully composed still life photograph.
