Island Funeral, 2021

The prints in the American Histrionics Series are “collaborations” with American landscape painters. These paintings (and their reproductions) have supported western expansion, in which my Mormons ancestors played a significant part. As a queer descendent of Mormon pioneers, I aim to reset the narrative. Relying on the misnomer of “virgin wilderness” I have recast the “virgin” as out-spoken, ebullient volcanoes and revealing themselves in these landscape paintings; cracking the Catskills with explosions, letting lava flow at Montauk, scattering alphabetic stones throughout. These are later painstakingly screen-printed, typically 40 or more layers by hand, onto large high-resolution reproductions of the paintings. The image on the left is the key. Each of these gem-like volcanic stones are embedded in the landscape on the right. With the key a narrative from "nature" can be decoded. Each are diptychs, which can be stacked vertically or hung side-by-side. Each is 23 x 27 inches