Starting in 2008, I began growing psychoactive plants to incorporate into photographs.  This work comes out of previous imagery that explores the body as a site of transformation, an ongoing interest in altered states of consciousness, and a fascination with the idea of merging ourselves with a plant.  Psychoactive plants have been used throughout history and in many cultures, contributing to economies, challenging beliefs, promoting spirituality, raising consciousness and causing violence.  They challenge legal and moral boundries. They have made us personally sick, high, addicted, awestruck, apathetic, focused, scared, sexy, stupid, enlightened and dead. 

The plants I have been working with so far include cannabis, opium, tobacco, datura, mandrake, morning glory, rivea corymbosa, ayahuasca, woodrose, salvia divinorum and san pedro cactus.  This work is in various stages of completion.  

Shown here is a cannabis piece from 2008 that includes both male and female cannabis blooms, along with landscape and nature elements. This work is partly inspired by early botanical drawings that combine landscape and nature elements with divergent scales that disrupt size relationships.

In the summer of 2009, I grew two types of tobacco plants and became interested in the scale and vibrancy of their leaves.  I began to use them as a surface for imagery to suggest that the plant, which has a complex relationship with humans, has inherited its own history, which has grown out on its leaves. The images are applied using a temporary tattoo process.  They reference the history of tobacco during years when it was seen as a panacea for many illnesses and an exotic practice.  The introduction and use of tobacco and the practice of tattooing skin were imported around the globe by sailors of this same era.  Other imagery placed on the leaves comes from commercially available temporary tattoos such as hearts and sculls, which reference addiction and the fleeting nature of life.