2025
In the wooden tea house where our multi-generational host shared tea from trees his family has cultivated for decades, I learned how this biodiverse polyculture system, practiced by the local indigenous Bulang and Dai peoples since the 10th century along the Ancient Tea Horse Road (茶马古道), allows each plant to contribute to the tea's place-based taste.
The banyan's nitrogen-fixing bacteria enriching soil, the ginger and cardamom adding subtle aromatic compounds, the diverse root systems creating complex mycorrhizal networks that enhance the tea plants' nutrient uptake and ultimately influence the nuanced flavor profiles that distinguish ancient forest teas from monoculture plantation varieties.
Scorched Amazon: Cattle, Soy and Capital depicts two Brazilian zebu cattle fleeing fires in the Amazon, set to clear land for soy farms and cattle ranching. Made with burnt bark, found rocks, shells, earth and mineral pigments, the work seeks to investigate the hidden links between U.S. retirement investments, driven by firms like BlackRock and Vanguard, and the destruction of indigenous lands and ecosystems.
What is the true cost of your burger? The bucolic rolling hills of industrial mono-crop farms may look abundant, but there is no birdsong, no shade. Forests are cleared, wetlands drained, and ecosystems stripped to sustain global markets, abroad and at home.
Americana as a concept has long imagined the western landscape as wide open, fertile, and endlessly expandable. This idea depends on the belief in infinite growth and supply, yet nature has its limits. To be American now is to recognize how this fantasy was built and what it continues to erase.
Scorched Amazon: Cattle, Soy and Capital, 2025, Natural earth and mineral pigments, linen, grommets, 72 x 52"
Scorched Amazon: Cattle, Soy and Capital, 2025, Natural earth and mineral pigments, linen, grommets, 72 x 52"
Scorched Amazon: Cattle, Soy and Capital, 2025, Natural earth and mineral pigments, linen, grommets, 72 x 52"
Scorched Amazon: Cattle, Soy and Capital, 2025, Natural earth and mineral pigments, linen, grommets, 72 x 52"
According to NOAA, the eastern Amazon has become a net carbon emitter. Over the past 40 years, the southeastern region has lost 30 percent of its forest, mostly from fires set to clear land for soy and cattle ranching. Degraded forests now release far more carbon than cleared areas but remain excluded from Brazil’s official emissions data.
The 2006 Soy Moratorium shifted soy to cleared land but failed to stop deforestation. Weak oversight allows soy and cattle expansion to drive ongoing forest loss. Between 2019 and 2021, JBS, the world’s largest meatpacker, was linked to over 250,000 acres of deforestation, a 25% drop in rainfall, and a 2.7°F rise in dry-season heat, conditions that fuel more fires.
According to NOAA, the eastern Amazon has become a net carbon emitter. Over the past 40 years, the southeastern region has lost 30 percent of its forest, mostly from fires set to clear land for soy and cattle ranching. Degraded forests now release far more carbon than cleared areas but remain excluded from Brazil’s official emissions data.
The 2006 Soy Moratorium shifted soy to cleared land but failed to stop deforestation. Weak oversight allows soy and cattle expansion to drive ongoing forest loss. Between 2019 and 2021, JBS, the world’s largest meatpacker, was linked to over 250,000 acres of deforestation, a 25% drop in rainfall, and a 2.7°F rise in dry-season heat, conditions that fuel more fires.
My grandma was born in 1938 in Liaoning, China, where she spent her childhood surrounded by rice paddies, vital to the local economy, culture, and survival. Seven years earlier, the Mukden Incident took place in the province, leading to the start of Japan’s invasion of China and WWII.
My grandma was born into war; a land that was witness to massacres, starvation, forced labor, and occupation. She vividly recalls surviving on broken rice and millet, the full grains of rice from harvests taken by the Japanese occupation.
Liaoning is also home to a unique abundance of fossils, buried in volcanic ash and mud to form fine-grained shale capable of preserving in high detail soft tissues, feathers, and organs. The land is wise and familiar with preservation and perseverance, keeping the score, documenting its history and inhabitants.
Ferns in Northern California’s redwood forests are vital in maintaining moisture and supporting ecosystem health. Their fronds capture fog and dew, channeling water to the soil, which nourishes redwoods and surrounding vegetation, especially in summer months of the drought-prone state.
Rio de Peixe, Brazil (Neide), Natural earth and mineral pigments on Dongba handmade paper, linen, grommets, 13 x 11.5”, 2025