Everything becomes possible,
first in our imagination
Metanoia
Metanoia is the title of a 40+ piece collage, composed of hand-cut and digital elements, and the name of a city built atop a mountain crest. The citizens honor the once-forgotten Tyche, the Greek goddess of fortune and chance. Once worshiped in Athens in times of social and political uncertainty, the goddess experienced a renaissance amidst rapid ecological unrest. Ever since, the now-rewilded myths associated with her continue to be retold. They have found deep, lasting resonance across generations and provide guidance during the dark nights of unknown futures.
Every summer solstice, a mirror image of the Earth appears in the sky. On this day, citizens ascend the central stairwell to drink from the sacred fountain, replenished by the waterfall that springs from the eyes of Tyche. Everyone gathers to grieve all earthly lives lost — both human and more-than-human, and celebrate the magnificence of our animate cosmos. Humans and butterflies alike dance in a waning sky, drunk on an awe-inspiring spectacle that, for some, lasts an evening, but for those awake, attuned, and in service to the breathing world, lasts a lifetime.
Animated by Neirin Best.
All Knowledge is Ecological
Hand-cut collage, 2024
“In a reimagined notion of the sanctuary, the ‘monster’ plays a major role. The monster is an agent of reconfiguration and a critique of form; it disturbs the familiar and reshapes the bodies we are used to. It resists categorization in its corporeal excessiveness. The monster welcomes the fugitive, the broken, into sanctuary; the place becomes a site for bodily reconfigurations. For re/memberment.”
— Bayo Akomolafe, Coming Down To Earth
Emerging Ambiguity
After forest fires, the first organisms to re-emerge from the black ashes are fungi. Particularly pyrophilous fungi — fire (pyro) loving (philous), are the first living beings to grow in the remnants of deceased woods. Fungi, in that sense, are embodiments of hope and resilience. They stay with and withstand the heat of the moment.
These times of ecological collapse call on us to embody and shapeshift into fungi. To bear witness to the cracks in our social fabric, and not shy away from them. To spread widely the mycelial connective tissue that weaves us into felt relationship with life, and expands our field of sensuous awareness of our ecological reality.
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In crises, we often revert to tried-and-tested solutions. In the rut of urgency, we respond in ways that seemed to work in the past. We try to cover up the crack, just so we can re-cover quickly and go back to normal. But in the midst of rapid ecological change and biodiversity loss, what does normal mean? And is the familiar destination of normality truly something to seek out? What if there’s something else we long for — a deeper need — that cannot be met with habitual ways of perceiving and doing? Oftentimes, the way we make sense of the crisis is the crisis.
“In the gathering dusk this other fog collects in white streamers and clouds over the fields. It is almost as if a vaporous white wood suddenly stands suspended over the grass. All outlines are blurred; the interim kingdom becomes visible in a presence that is neither object nor light nor darkness. The ancient name still lingers. It is called an ceo draíochta: the fairy fog.”
— John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes
Divine Integration
“From source's point of view, darkness is an invitation into mystery, into silence, into humility, into this crazy idea that we don't know what the hell is going on. Rather than trying to thrash about and change things, we are being invited to slow down and become receptive to some other imagination, some other way of sensing what is going on.”
— Francis Weller
The Long Dark
“Grief and love are sisters, woven together from the beginning. Their kinship reminds us that there is no love that does not contain loss and no loss that is not a reminder of the love we carry for what we once held close.”
— Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow
Liminality
Navigating the space between stories puts us up for an immense challenge. We must seek the others to find hope and support when that which we love falls away, rediscover how to grieve for what we lose and praise what is lost, and learn how to remain alive in the face of death. To not resist being wholly taken by awe at the birth of spring, for somehow we know that all is at stake. The liminal space between stories offers the possibility to reclaim our freedom; sense deeper into the future that wants to be born; and start threading a different story of the world we want to live by.
Buy Prints for Your Home
Limbo, 2021
Digital collage
Aliveness, 2022
Hand-cut collage
Desire to Understand, 2021
Digital collage
Postcards from the Universe
Nostalgia of a time not yet lived
hand-cut collage series
Listening Mountain
The ancient mountain does not speak
It only listens
The ancient mountain does not demand obedience
It only calls forth
The awakened traveller
Fishing Dark Material
The Last Glimpse
Catching Astronauts
Transcendental
(client commission)Sympoiesis
Sympoiesis is the experience and design lab I co-founded with my partner. We are on a mission to develop our collective response-ability to metabolize loss and regenerate living systems. The collage represents a vision for regenerative communications, and the thriving futures it can make possible. Animated by Neirin Best.
To tear apart and to re-member. The way worlds vanish. The way worlds are built.
As a collage artist and designer with a background in entrepreneurship and regenerative development, I support impact-driven organizations realize their creative potential and grow their community — not by force but by radiance and magnetism. Please, get in touch for commissions.