The Photo

American Badger (Taxidea taxus)

The Location

Lamar Valley, Yellowstone National Park, WY

Established in 1872, Yellowstone National Park was the first national park in the United States, and has thus been one for about 150 years. For 10,000 years before, the land was home to many Indigenous Tribes, and many more animals than inhabit the area today. A convergence of the The Great Basin, The Great Plains, and the Columbia Plateau, it is still a special place in this country with a wide array and abundance of life. Having been expanded and more heavily protected over the last century and a half, Yellowstone National Park today stands as the largest intact temperate-zone ecosystems on the planet, preserves over 10,000 hydrothermal features, more than the rest of the planet combined, and is home to the largest concentration of wildlife in the lower 48 states of the United States. That last fact is extremely evident when you are there in person. Although consistently a top 10 most frequented park with between 3 and 4 million visitors annually, the wildlife still exists in droves. I have never experienced the feeling of looking into the past that I feel when I am in Yellowstone. One truly gets a glimpse into the world that existed throughout the United States before this land became the United States. Animals interact with each other and exist in numbers that you simply don’t see throughout the rest of the country. I try to visit once a year to see the ever quickening changes and collect more photos of one of my favorite places I have ever visited.

The FRAME

Blue Mahoe (Hibiscus elatus)

The National Tree of Jamaica, Blue Mahoe is a very unique wood. It is common throughout the Caribbean islands, growing as far north as the Keys of the United States, where I have sourced mine from. It is one of the very few woods that has a gray overall tone to its heartwood and can display streaks of blue, green, or purple hues throughout. It is a very hard wood with tight grain which makes it a very high quality wood for furniture making, bowl turning, or similar uses. It is one of my favorite woods that I have worked with and I would love to be able to get my hands on some more of it.

THE ELEMENTS

Fire, Water, Earth, and Air

In the display case in the bottom of the frame, four items are in preserved glass vials. The items represent the elements: fire (wood charcoal), water (mineral oil), earth (soil), and air (a milkweed seed). I include these items in my work as a symbol of the interconnectedness of all life on Earth, and as a reminder that humans must do better.

THE PLAQUE

Magnetic Information Plaque

I engrave a wooden information plaque for each work. The plaque includes what the photograph is of, the location of the photograph, what type of wood the frame is made of, and where I sourced the wood. The plaques also explain why the vials are included in each work. The back of each plaque states the meaning of my logo: “The circle represents our home, Planet Earth. The hourglass represents time. The five horizontal lines in the bottom of the hourglass represent the five mass extinction periods that have occurred in the past. The single line falling through the hourglass represents our current mass extinction period, caused by us.” The plaques are attached magnetically and can be removed to read or to store on the back of each frame if you prefer not to have it displayed on the front.