Inheritance

This work explores a symbiotic metaphor, tracing the strange and often irreversible threads that bind all life. In this imagined ecology, the natural order is inverted: parasitic plants flourish without sunlight, butterflies feed on tears, and death becomes the nutrient source for new growth.

Inspired by travels through California’s National Forests, the composition centers on the red snow plant (Sarcodes), a mycotrophic species sustained not by the sun, but by fungi underground. From the body of a mother cottontail rabbit emerges an improbable bloom of native orchids, pinedrops, and strangling dodder vines. Her two offspring, nestled at her side, are sustained—biochemically and metaphorically—by the cycle of decomposition, their lives transformed by loss.

A portion of proceeds supports large-scale land conservation through Art to Acres.