In his book, Basin and Range, John McPhee explains, “If you free yourself from the conventional reaction to a quantity like a million years, you free yourself a bit from the boundaries of human time.” I prefer to view the world from a geologic assimilation of time. The human understanding of its duration is skewed and relative to our experience and mortality. On a roughly 4 billion year timeline of Earth’s history, the human inhabitance is barely even visible. Needless to say, the Earth was here long before humans, and will be here long afterwards. I believe that for human beings to think we have the power to completely destroy the Earth is an expression of our vanity and arrogance. Words like “apocalypse” or “doomsday” have inherent religious connotation and suggest that the end of the world coincides with human extinction… But the Earth will go on with or without us, and I take comfort in that fact. Through all of the damage that human beings inflict on the earth (and therefore each other), nature will recover.
In my work I attempt to visualize the imperceptible geologic process by compacting millions of years into a single moment. Rocks bend and grow. Entire mountains crumble in an instant. And the environmental damage that human kind has left in their wake has long since healed. I’m drawn to how geologic processes (erosion, orogeny, etc) relate to our institutions (financial, governmental, etc). I strive to present an era that defies human intervention in the landscape. An optimistic view of the natural world, post human presence.