Art Mediums: Photography

@thenanoforest

I am a creative director, design curator, and artist. I’ve shown my work at CoCA, Linda Farris Gallery, Bellevue Art Museum, and SOIL. My work is part of the permanent collections of Seattle City Light, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, MoPop, SF MoMA, Emory University, Yale University, and the University of Washington.

“My mother was Tulalip. My sister and I grew up on the reservation (a most extreme form of redlining) in a house on land leased from the tribe. Because my mother didn’t own the property, the house was very affordable. It’s a community where she belonged, historically and legally bound to the land. When the tribe ended her long-term lease as part of a plan to restore property near Tulalip Bay, the house was worthless. Essentially, it had been repossessed.”  

“After graduating from the University of Washington in the mid-90s, I bought an affordable house in the Central District, then a majority-black neighborhood. My best friend owned the house next door. We renovated, took down fences, removed bars from windows, planted trees, and helped establish a community pea patch. When he left, I bought his house and became a landlord.” 

“Having seen my original neighbors slowly replaced and the racial balance change, I ask myself: am I a gentrifier?” 

“For this project, I thought about my role as a property owner in the neighborhood, the reservation I came from, and the original state of the land versus Seattle’s incessant development. I realized I have an underutilized piece of property, a parking space at my rental house inside the remnants of a garage, viewable only from the street. It became a spot to experiment with public art on private property. The result is the Nanoforest, a tiny slice of native plants and trees in the heart of the Central District.” 

The Nanoforest is a diorama of what the land was, identified by a “land use” sign announcing the coming demolition of all existing structures and reforestation of our neighborhood. Clearly a joke, but also a space frequently inhabited by birds, insects and raccoons; a retrograde contrast to the cube house construction swallowing the land. It’s also a connecting point for my neighbors, who laugh at and lament the changes around us. It’s a space to experiment, primarily through photoshoots of my sister and me engaging in street theater. Our costumes have gotten darker, reflecting the pandemic, but no less amusing to my neighbors.”

“Having started on one of American society’s lowest rungs—the rez—I don’t think of myself as a gentrifier, but one who’s added to the neighborhood and its culture. My possession of the land is only fleeting, and our time as a species is extremely precarious. How we treat what little nature remains matters. One way or another, nature will repossess.”