In my beloved Florida, wetlands are unceremoniously interred under clean, comforting fill. Parched canal banks emerge from muck and limerock, the bucket teeth scooping glistening white ancient marine fossils with each wound. Myth replaces reality; a parroted paradise is born of stout St. Augustine grass, primly planted medians, perfectly spaced palms, and gracefully arcing sprinkler showers. Development of the swampy lands bleeds gold and greenbacks, which are slurped up by the enterprising. The predatory replace the predators. The Florida panther, the black bear, the bobcat now displaced and ever-seeking refuge in dwindling wildlands. In the dusky darkness of night, the insects screaming, stick-built gridded subdivisions blaze their humming halogen streetlights, forever echoing what was holy and will never be again.
Yet, coastal Florida, where so much of the swanky mansion opulence resides, is already under siege by sea level rise brought on by global warming. The tides are rising. Roads are flooding. Municipalities are scrambling to hastily retrofit infrastructure to save precious homes. Coral reefs in the Florida Keys, once thriving as the quintessence of biodiversity, are dying at unprecedented rates. Florida is on the very brink of its comeuppance, and that is the very fraught moment my art inhabits. In the moment of peril; in the pain of what may be lost. A kind of prelude to the doom I see unfolding, a harbinger of what may become. A tidewater elegy.
Somehow, however, hope still resides in my very marrow. I was born in a false Eden and I will spend the rest of my days exposing it. Yet, I know the remnants of paradise can be saved. The microcosm of Florida. The macrocosm of earth. While I cannot be a savior outright, I can craft hundreds of intricate corals with my hands. I can build surreal sculptural ecosystems and inspire wonder. I’m no prophet and possess no pulpit. I can, however, utilize targeted artistic interventions to change cultural attitudes about the environment. In my art practice, this paradigm grows sculptures like weeds. They thrum inside of me like a brood of cicadas, all born of this intimate knowledge of the state, all waiting to emerge from the soil of my being. Embracing my birthright and position as a sculptor-scientist, I will create them.