In considering the possibilities of how one could capture visually, the categories of air, water and food, I started to think about the literal translation of the word ecology--"earth's households," and what that would look like. If air, water and food are what biologically make up the earth's household, one is faced with the overwhelming reality that that is literally everything. Art history has a precedent for the visual space of these three categories--from paintings of the harvest and the bounty of the hunt, to landscapes populated with creatures from incompatible reaches of the earth. But whereas historical artists seemed to be interested in representing man's control and power over earth's household and nature more generally, the more I got into my project, the more I became interested in man's complete lack of control over its household. This is where the idea of the "everything" drawings came from. I had been making many smaller drawings that zoomed in on one particular world within the areas of air, water and food--a micro detail, a moment of transformation--but with the everything drawings I wanted to emphasize the complexity of interconnectivity, of transformation, of decay and corruption, and regeneration. I wanted the drawings to feel like one was within the composting process--the process that is so eloquently spoken about in Whitman's "This Compost"--"such sweet things are made of such corruptions."
