site-specific installation for Ringwood Manor State Park
repurposed plastic bottles, plastic netting, steel cable
Understory, a term applied to vegetation between the canopy and the ground below, can also be thought of as behaviors that create a certain outcome. Our dependence on single use plastics, such as bottled water, is producing an exponentially expanding mass of its own, penetrating ecosystems everywhere. Where the concentric rings of a tree tell its long history, the concentric rings of bottles that form a plane in this installation represent the rapid accumulation of a new understory covering more and more of our ecosystem. The shift in color from perimeter to interior echoes the changing of the leaves as the season shifts to fall; by the end of the exhibition the tree’s bare silhouette will be starkly intersected by a troubling layer of our contemporary understory.