My work is rooted in the exploration of two matters critical to life in the unique, beautiful, and extreme Sonoran Desert: water and noise.
In this arid land, the struggle to secure reliable water sources is eternal. This, in turn, makes those sources enchanted places for human, animal, and floral gathering. Urbanization and development often disappear these life-sustaining origins or reduce them to recreational amenities. My work seeks to make these enchanted places more present to us aurally, and to make figurative the countless ways that desert life is shaped by our encounters with water.
Development and urbanization also increase “noise” or sonic incursions into the physical and imagined soundscapes of the desert. My work with these incursions frames questions about how the subjective experience of sound tacitly helps to guide practices, presumptions, and policies of acceptable development and conservation.