Their nests can be found hanging from knee height to 30 or 40 feet up in the air. They can be as large as 3 feet tall and house up to 700 wasps. During the summer the Bald-Faced Hornets will gather all types of weathered wood and even plastic tarps and other various forms of paper to fabricate the envelope that encases the combs inside. The nest essentially becomes a reflection and a true representation of its surrounding colors and textures.

In Fall, when the first rains descend, nests are abandoned and most will fall to the ground. I started collecting these nests in 2005 and found them many times in or around the same Madrone trees I collect bark from to make another series of work. Being that much of my work is made using wood and paper I felt a deep connection to the intriguing texture of these nests and they have inspired me to create new artwork.

By cutting up this once three dimensional structure into rectangular pieces and connecting the lines of color horizontally, they become like layers of the earth in the new form of a structured “painting”. Each layer embodies the essence of the natural construction materials these colonies of wasps gathered and created by instinct.

To come full circle I find my actions to be similar to the wasps; I collect materials from encompassing locations and use them to create something that symbolizes the DNA of those areas, which is what I am striving to accomplish in this series of work.

I’ve always been completely infatuated with natural, textured, paper-like materials I find outside. One in particular comes from the Madrone tree, also known as Arbutus, with its beautiful, sleek, rich orange-red bark that at the end of each summer peels off to expose a new, silvery-chic layer underneath. It’s so smooth, it’s like skin — and when it gets saturated with rain the shiny surface of the tree looks like a tangle of naked arms and legs emerging from the forest floor.

As the bark peels off, it collects at the base of the tree like hundreds of tiny paper scrolls littered about. On the hottest days, when this is happening, you can actually hear the bark drying and peeling off of the trees, reminiscent of the sound of slow, crinkling paper. When I was younger, I used to help my mom collect bunches of these delicate pieces because when soaked in water, an ocher-colored dye is released that she would then use to stain her basket weaving material. After she was done soaking the bark, we’d pour it outside and I noticed how it transformed and became soft and pliable. I could then unravel the curled up “scrolls”, revealing some pieces almost as big as a sheet of paper.

Since then, I’ve been fascinated by Madrone bark and in the past few years have been thinking of ways to incorporate it into my artwork. I want it to be appreciated and highlighted as a piece of nature’s beauty. Something that just needs to be picked up off the ground, given a little time and energy to turn it into something that people have never seen before, or at least arranged and displayed in a new, unseen way. I have started to cut and apply them onto wood canvases, completely covering the surface. By cutting the bark into rectangular pieces they become almost like swatches of color from a paintbrush, creating a painting-like form, but with a richness and depth only matched by other naturally occurring colors and materials.

This idea of making a painting or drawing using processes and/or materials that normally wouldn’t fall into that category is very important to me; to reinterpret the idea of a painting or drawing through the lens of my own artistic perspective. The final work represents an organization of seemingly chaotic content and situations, yet bound by a sense of structure, a common thread that has become prevalent in all of my work.