Tributary is an exploration of the visible and invisible marks of human hands on the landscape. It investigates human relationships with the environment over time, forefronting the impacts of human driven climate change. The work exposes and reconsiders the layered histories of specific locations: from the geologic forces that shaped the land, to impacts of Western colonialism, to the current practices of development, destruction, and restoration by the local communities she interacts with every day. Tributary is a series of prints, artist’s books and installations that are inspired by the confluence of the Kaw and Missouri Rivers in Kansas City, Kansas, that has expanded to consider multiple points within the watershed. This project considers how water shapes human life and how our actions impact river environments in return.

Bodies of water often anchor my creative investigation. In this work I trace the layered histories of the Missouri River watershed, the surrounding landscapes and the people that are impacted by or impact that watershed in return. This project considers how water shapes human life and how our actions impact river environments. It explores difficult aspects of human relationships with rivers, and at the same time, offers a way to ground our interactions from a more humble place. A place of awe, gratitude, and reciprocity. 

The prints from this body of work are a visual investigation of how water has shaped the American landscape in relation to the colonization history of the Midwest, and concerns about the American ideal of Manifest Destiny, ideals specifically represented by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. In my work Lewis & Clark’s journey west along the Missouri River represents the start of forced reorganization of the people and ecological environments of the West. I see this reorganization of the river system, its human and non-human inhabitants and the landscape itself, as the beginning of many of the ecological and environmental justice issues that we see today.