About

Artist Statement

My artistic intention is to understand our place in time by creating representations of land use, industrial growth and decline, and impacts of climate change while also asking questions about futures of communities. My early focus on the relationship between people, places, and industries resulted from my grandfather’s migration from Sicily in the early 1900s and my growing up in Detroit in the 1970s and 80s, a time of economic devastation caused by upheaval in the auto industry and white flight. Initially I wanted to examine the power dynamic between industry and the early immigrant population in the city. This led me to research other times of major population shifts and their relationship to industrial growth and decline.

For the past decade, I have used both historic and new modes of mapping as well as industrial materials – ceramics, glass, steel – to illustrate the connection between manufacturing and population changes in American cities. More recently, I have focused on how the impacts of climate change are expected to cause population shifts as manifested in the “Cities Underwater” project. Visits to Alaska and Nova Scotia in summer 2023 further deepened my interest in climate change. In Bethel, Alaska, I visited family, including my sister-in-law who is Yúpik with ancestral ties to the Kuskokwim River Delta. Heat and sea level rise are transforming the Delta, which is central to subsistence fishing and travel to surrounding towns. The salmon’s changing spawning patterns are leading to food shortages, and thawing permafrost and rising water are causing flooding, forcing Yúpik villages to relocate. Traveling in Nova Scotia near where my mother was born, I witnessed miles of land and many communities devastated by wildfires.

There is power in turning raw data into three-dimensional models by helping non-scientists better understand the effects of demographic shifts and climate change. Conversations with specialists — historians, urban planners, demographers, climate scientists, and statisticians — deepens my understanding of and connection to the subject matter. By creating physical interpretations of data on phenomena such as rising sea levels, I am able to facilitate difficult conversations in communities less inclined to connect with data or analytics. I have found that glass’s aesthetic properties naturally draw people in, making them more receptive to the stories the objects tell. My choice of glass is also meant to demonstrate the fragility of populations. The use of traditional craft materials to present data three-dimensionally allows viewers to place themselves in the work and make connections between their communities and others.

What started with a personal interest in connecting economic shifts in Detroit to the transformation of its landscape has expanded to other regions of the world where I look for traces of historical landscape layered within what we see today. The evolution of physical environments parallels the movement of peoples and helps me further understand questions raised during my formative years in the landscape of Detroit.