I’ve followed a linear path for the past fifteen years.  I began doing experimental live-performed video, which gradually became a kind of narrative, media-based theater.  Later, I lost interest in working live, and my present work has a resemblance to traditional moviemaking.  Through all these phases of development, I have always used elements of physical assemblage, […]

The marks left by people and the way nature incorporates those marks into the landscape have always fascinated me.  Human-made environments are in time turned back to nature.  I am interested in the point at which nature has infiltrated and textured the relics, but has not yet absorbed the evidence of a human narrative.  This […]

From a tendency to engage in highly process-driven tactile endeavors, a natural inclination to salvage, and a deep appreciation for architecture and the natural environment, I explore, stretch and refine the typical associations and intended functions of mundane, excess and disregarded materials. I encounter these materials in various conditions. In some cases the patina of use is […]

In all of my collage work I am interested in transformation, and in particular, how I can re-use and re-imagine old images into entirely new contexts and meanings. My vision is to create pieces which, despite all that troubles the world, mirror the peacefulness and benevolent energy that is also part of my experience.  The bejeweled […]

I paint on sheetrock and reclaimed construction boards using discarded paint to bring attention to necessary structures that not only protect us from the elements, but divide, encompass, and define societies as well. Historically, walls have been vehicles for personalization, canvasses to decorate, and tell the stories of our existence. Looking beyond the utilitarian definition, […]

Nicolas Bourriaud discusses a contemporary art practice, coined “postproduction” as artists who reproduce, re-purpose, or re-mix available cultural products in a process referred to as “cultural recycling.”  Similar to hip-hop artists sampling previously created music or splicing together clips of video, postproduction is the act of synthesizing disparate artifacts from our lives to create a fresh, […]

I completed a triptych of films about rural life and farming — the third of which, Range, was presented at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.  My new project, Soiled, is both a continuation of themes explored in my previous works and an outgrowth of my own experiences of living and growing food in the city […]

I make works by collaborating with previously existing objects.  I interact with things and then use what I discover to reshape them.  The meaning in my work is always contingent upon and spread across a constellation of relationships.  Each work adds to every other and to the space of understanding draped between them: act-to-act, idea-to-idea.  […]

I make immersive-collaged works on paper that draw on the language of maps. The impetus for my project was my longing to connect to my father, a long-haul truck driver who died many years ago. Based on road maps of the United States, routes my father often traveled, and an invented conglomeration, mutation, and fragmentation […]

Ben Burke combines installation, puppetry, and live performance to present theatrical events informed by fables and vaudeville.  In 2008 he participated inSwimming Cities of the Switchback Sea, where he created seven boats made from reclaimed materials and modified car engines. The boats served as moving stages for his hour-long play, which was performed as the […]