In The Toxic Forest

On first moving to Buffalo, I was amazed by the amount of abandoned houses, factories and grain elevators still standing in plain sight. These places were both empty and wide open, inviting exploration. Graffiti on the walls let me know that young people were roaming and scavenging through these spaces even if I didn't catch a glimpse of them.

I started hiking through the landscape, taking photos, admiring the deer running by the empty silos and watching birds nest under rusty bridges. I could feel the history, the industrial collapse and decay as a real wound on the earth, not as secondhand knowledge but as direct experience. This led to a series of sketches, my dark fairytales, imagining the children and animals that still live here.

This series asks, "what kind of landscapes will our future children inherit?"