Meares Island Nurse Log
My work investigates the gap between the natural world and the built world, addressing issues of sustainability, natural resources, consumerism, and waste. On a visit to British Columbia, I kayaked out to Meares Island to explore the old growth temperate rainforest. The lush, fecund forest was simultaneously growing and decomposing, brimming with entanglement and life. “Nurse logs”, decomposing logs from fallen trees, host an exponentially greater amount and diversity of life than a living tree, but are often seen as a rotten, dead and useless hunks of debris. Clearing this type of material from the forest floor reduces the vitality of the ecosystem, and human efforts to tidy-up is a detrimental impulse driven by desire for order over wilderness. This work is made from components of many school desk-chairs collected from the skip.