"Echo Everything"

Echoes are everywhere, didn't you know?

Echoes of all kinds, not just sound. Drawings are echoes, too - of images we see in the world around us, and also inside of us. I am inspired to record the many ways the natural world echoes itself, and I do this through drawings, paintings, and sculpture. I am especially fascinated by all the different shapes that trees make, and I see tree-shapes in everything - maps of rivers, with their long, twisting streams bring to mind tall trees with many limbs; certain rocks remind me of tree bark; when I look at the veins on my hands or arms, I see tree branches, or the similar way that veins travel through certain types of leaves. Recording these patterns in a drawing or sculpture is like creating an echo of what my eyes see. In a way, each drawing I make is a mirror, permanently reflecting some scene I have observed.

I often go walking in the woods behind my house in search of new patterns.

One day, before the buds on the trees had burst into leaves, I came across several pieces of natural slate, strewn across the ground. Slate, a type of very flat, soft rock, has a distinct deep gray color that sort of shimmers as light travels across its surface. As I walked and watched sunlight seep through the net of branches and twigs above me and onto the leaf-covered ground, the pieces of slate appeared to me as mirrors, reflecting all the deep shadows cast by the treetops above. On the slate, the shadows were dark, and the surrounding light appeared a bright, warm gray, and it seemed as though a picture of a tree had been imprinted upon the stone's surface. I set upon recording my observations, and eventually completed a series of engravings on some of the slate I had found. My goal was to make very detailed drawings of trees from the viewpoint of the ground, while also recreating the distinctly high-contrast shapes made by the shadows of trees on the blank slate when I first came encountered it.

The result is the set of engravings you see displayed. These drawings are, to me, reflections, or echoes of my observations, recorded from life, inspired by the many shapes and patterns that echo each other in the natural world.