Yes, I do have an example. So, at the most basic level, I'm a woodworker. I build things with wood, and I particularly enjoy working with diseased trees. They represent ecological circumstances and histories that are rich and interconnected.

A few years ago, my collaborator Amber and I worked with trees affected by a pathogen called Phytophthora ramorum, commonly known as Sudden Oak Death. This pathogen has been devastating oak species, particularly in California. It's like a tree pandemic, and though it's being quarantined, there's concern that it will spread to the live oak trees in the southern U.S. We received a tan oak tree infected with this pathogen, and we made 7,000 handmade pencils from it. These pencils became part of an ongoing project where we hold workshops to discuss the entanglements of ecology, disease, and human impact. We named the piece 7,000 Marks, which references Joseph Beuys' 7,000 Oaks from the 80s.

What really struck me about this project is how unbelievably hard the tan oak wood is. It’s known as "stone oak," and it lives up to its name. Working with it was incredibly challenging. I was trying to process this material into 7,000 pencils, which sounds easy in theory, but in practice, it was a massive undertaking. The wood shattered like glass when we tried to mold it, which was frustrating. We learned that indigenous communities would soak tan oak in a river for seven years before using it because of how difficult it was to work with. It was eye-opening to realize that the traditional ecological knowledge passed down by these communities was exactly what we needed to handle the material properly. We had been naïvely pushing it through machines, which caused it to explode, but the indigenous techniques helped us understand how to work with it more effectively.

It was a real lesson in the extraordinary properties of the plants around us and the importance of respecting traditional knowledge.

Yes, it’s incredibly important to me. I’m probably being a bit repetitive, but because every project I work on is site-responsive, it always involves and includes traditional knowledge. The work I do doesn’t contribute to further ecosystem degradation—in fact, it aims to do the opposite.

One project I’m thinking of right now is from 2018, called the Edward Hines National Forest. It was a collaboration with the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, and Raewyn Martin was my collaborator. The piece explored deforestation in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, which is where I’m from. Back then, all the white pines were taken down during the “cutover period” between 1880 and 1920. A lumber baron named Edward Hines deforested the entire northern part of Wisconsin. The wood was then transported down the Mississippi River and used to build Chicago and the western United States.

For us, it was really important to engage in a conversation about how the people who have lived on that land for thousands of years, as well as the settler communities now living there, perceive the land’s current state. As part of the exhibition, we created a book inspired by the US Forest Service’s “use book,” but we emptied it out and filled it with our own content. We interviewed local tribal elders to understand their experience of the land's transformation, and we also spoke to DNR foresters to get their perspective. We wanted to tell the story from multiple viewpoints to honor everyone’s experience while avoiding any further harm. It was a very collaborative process.

That’s exactly how it works. My work has a specific agenda, which is to help inform a cultural conversation about the human relationship with the non-human world and to address what I believe are exploitative and extractive practices that are unsustainable. I know that’s a lot of jargon, but that’s essentially the core of my work. That being said, I do bring certain biases when approaching these sites or contexts.

If I were to use an artistic analogy, I would say that I choose specific colors to highlight in the painting of my work because I want to create a certain picture. For example, I might choose to engage with an Indigenous elder over another community member because I’m interested in highlighting their voice. But we also try to provide a diversity of perspectives, not just a counter-narrative but a range of voices. I often create texts or writings in relation to my work to accompany the piece itself.

I gather input from experts. A few years ago, I worked on a project in Southern Illinois, where there’s significant coal extraction. Beneath the ground in this area is a well-preserved fossilized forest from the Carboniferous era, one of the most intact fossil forests ever found. The miners who were working in the coal mines discovered it, and the coal was the soil from which this forest grew. The forest fossilized beautifully due to a climate event similar to the warming we’re experiencing now. To understand the context, I spoke with paleo-geologists and experts who could explain how these fossils were formed, why this warming event occurred, and how it parallels the current climate crisis.

I collaborated with a group called Deep Time Chicago, and we also brought members of our audience on a hike through the area to discuss the fossil system. We interviewed the miners who saw these tree fossils while working in the mines, and we included their voices in an audio piece presented in the installation. Only a few people—paleo-geologists and the miners—have ever seen these fossils. So, the process is like research, blending creative output with factual investigation. It’s very much about including all the voices and perspectives in the work."