Waste. Rubbish. Garbage. Seconds. Junk. Debris.

What do we humans find valuable?

The series Collection Day is an array of detailed graphite drawings depicting yard waste bins filled with discarded plants. Initially intrigued by the sculptural forms and unique personalities of the bins, I soon experienced them as a metaphor for our human relationship to the natural world.

Some, exploding with leaves and branches, highlight the futility of trying to contain nature within man-made confines. Others, lids shut tightly with only a few leaves peaking out, present a muffled surrender to human intervention.

Each depicts the unexpected beauty and humor found in the messy leftovers of life. Wu Fang says it best in his essay, Why We Look at Plants, in a Corrupted World.

“Anyone who slowly dissolves into the forest at night would believe that the legends of destiny are already inscribed into the body of the plant, which uses growth rings, scent, its own form, and the dirt in which it dwells to write history — a history that distantly echoes that of the eath’s boiling core.

Perhaps awed by the power of this night writing, humans produce poems and literature about plants, images of plants, social metaphors about plants. By means of anthropomorphosis we adopt the wilderness. We turn plants into the mirror image of culture in order to dispel their mysterious, voiceless power.”