PORTFOLIO
Clusterfuck: A Queer Herbarium
Clusterfuck is an autobiographical herbarium collection. These packets are part of a much larger collection-in-the-making, documenting my lifelong journey unlearning heteronormativity and mononormativity, Herbarium collections, like diaries, allow us to create a memory outside of ourselves and return to a specific place or moment in time. They provide an opportunity to revisit that moment with new eyes and new questions. In traditional herbariums, these questions are about evolution and ecology. In the case of Clusterfuck, the questions are about identity, relationships, self-discovery, and most importantly, love.
Not so Straight[forward]: Queer Theory, Lichen Reproduction, and Art as Scientific Method
In his 1871 book, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, Charles Darwin revolutionized the world's understanding of life on Earth and how it came to be. He also bequeathed this new theory of evolution with social norms about sex that still haunt the biological sciences to this day.
As Stacy Alaimo explains in Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire, Darwinian evolutionary theory, with its emphasis on discrete individuals and competition as the primary driver of evolution, has historically marginalized cooperative, symbiotic, and multispecies modes of life. Queer theory offers a powerful analytic framework for addressing these limitations. A queer science stance insists that identifying and eradicating binary and heteronormative bias does not undermine scientific rigor; rather, it produces more accurate accounts of the world.
Not-so Straight[forward] proposes a transdisciplinary project that unifies scientific research, artistic practice, and queer theory under the lens of reproduction and diversity in lichens—symbiotic [polyamorous?] organisms found on every continent in the world. Using queer theory as an analytic framework and art and design as research methods, the project will investigate how multispecies partnerships within lichens impact their sexual reproduction, and how these dynamics challenge heteronormative assumptions embedded in the study of reproductive biology and evolutionary theory.
This project was launched in July 2026. Stay tuned for updates.
All I know about love. 2026. 2- color Risograph print based on a stereo microscope image (Imaged on an AmScope SM-3 Series Zoom Trinocular Stereo Microscope at the Carnegie Mellon School of Art)
Lichens of Oregon
Collected in 2013. Imaged in 2025.
Other Work
Lichen Types: Portrait of a Chosen Family. .2024. Collaged image. 2- color Risograph print. Printed by the Ann Arbor District Library on a RISO MH 9450
Lace Lichen (Ramalina menziesii ). 2025. 2- color Risograph print based on a stereo microscope image (Imaged on an AmScope SM-3 Series Zoom Trinocular Stereo Microscope at the Carnagie Mellon School of Art, printed on a RISO MH 9450).
British Soldier Lichen (Cladonia cristatella). 2025. Hand-drawn image. 2- color Risograph print. Printed by the Ann Arbor District Library on a RISO MH 9450