This is a selection of images from Bone Stories, a loosely knit group of images that I made over a period of several years, based on bones collected as study specimens.  During a facility cleanup at Reed College in Portland, OR, bones from courses taught in the 1930's and 40's were discovered stored in a janitor's closet. Opening the dusty and often mislabeled boxes was a highly charged experience.  Like small burials, these specimens seemed imbued with meaning.  My encounter with this material began my work with scientific study collections. 

In Cartwheel Suite, a series of six 40" x 50" gelatin silver prints, I used the bones of a disarticulated calf.  I stored the bones in a corrugated box that had contained large sheets of mat board.  One evening, the light in my basement studio transformed the bones into a luminous figure, suggesting to me a "dance of death."  I made alterations to the box and rearranged and re-photographed the bones until the "cartwheel" movement developed. The painted and delaminated box can be perceived in various ways (as stage curtains, coffin fabric, candy wrapper, and so on).
 

Together, the six images depict an acrobatic sequence in which the expressions of the figure are joyous and have a spirit of high good humor.  The juxtaposition of the cartwheel and the skeletal materials suggests the Epicurean injunction carpe diem, "seize the day."

The twenty-four butterflies and moths from India were preserved in folded, triangular paper wrappings.  I photographed them so that the wrappings appear to extend out from the picture plane, as might the wing of the insect.  All of the images in the series rotate on an axis around a shared central point, and a delicate sense of movement is suggested as the direction of the light changes from one piece to the next

The diagonal lighting in this series of eight images echoes the visual impression I had when I opened the door of a weathered shed in Canada's Northwest Territories and saw a shaft of sunlight transform the bleached skull of a horse.  The title refers to the malevolent toy of that name, which provokes multiple responses:  surprise, fright, laughter.  Although all the images are composed using the horse skull and a piece of cloth inside a corrugated box, each suggests a unique character--a jester, a swamp creature, and so on--some more ambiguous than others.

The selecting and categorizing of insect specimens in collections is an effort to impose order on the diversity of nature.  This selection of some of the collections I photographed for Insecta were methodically arranged by scientists; others offer a random record of a collector's travels.  For one of the photographs I placed a friend's treasured moth specimens in a standard collection box, which can house one insect or one thousand. 
 

In this selection of small portraits of animal fetal specimens from Portland State University and Lewis & Clark College I wanted to call attention to the exquisite way in which form evolves, and to the evolutionary history and life force that we share with other living beings.  The colors are achieved by selective masking in conjunction with various combinations of toners and stains.

The Marine Algae Project comprises three groups of work:  Celebration Quartet, Cors Mortale, and Evidence of Its Occurrence. In the spring of 2003 I was invited to spend a month at the Whiteley Center residence for scholars and artists at the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories on San Juan Island.  In particular, I was there to photograph in the marine algae herbarium.  In these pigment prints, the physicality of the ink on paper closely mimics the thinly pressed algae specimens, and the photographic prints take on attributes of graphic media such as watercolor or pastel.

Celebration Quartet:  The shapes of the seaweeds in Celebration Quartet suggest chalices raised in toast.

Cors Mortale:  Cors Mortale, Latin for human (mortal) heart, is a play on descriptive taxonomic determinations of genus and species.  As I looked through hundreds of marine algae specimens, remarkable and suggestive forms began to recur.  In this series the seaweeds represent hearts--as muscles, as icons, as metaphors. I created my own Latin nomenclature for these images, based on taxonomic naming conventions.

Evidence of its Occurrence:  This selection of work takes its name from text I found on a specimen card that carried just a stain of what had once been preserved.  The piece Evidence, which bears part of this text, serves as a sort of frontispiece, referring to the value of collecting, preserving, and identifying as a basis for scientific knowledge and understanding.  The text takes on elegiac resonance in this age of habitat depletion.