Fossils of the Future began during an artist residency at the Banff Centre in 2015. The series imagines core samples extracted in the distant future, their vertical strata revealing what our era leaves behind.
Each column is built in layers and embedded with single-use plastics gathered from daily life. Friends save hot cup lids, fruit netting, water bottles, and food containers - small remnants of convenience that would otherwise enter landfill or the uncertain stream of recycling. These materials are compressed and encased, transforming disposable fragments into geological record.
The works function as speculative archaeology, suggesting a time when plastic has fused with earth to form a permanent layer of the Anthropocene. Early pieces in the series included porcelain castings of single-use bottles and containers glazed with volcanic, crust-like surfaces, hydrocal casts of packaging, and large-scale cyanotypes of plastic waste. Across mediums, the series considers how synthetic materials outlast us, and how what feels fleeting today may become tomorrow’s fossil.
These seven columns are imagined
as core samples from a time 300 years in our future,
each holding traces of the world we have left behind —
from layers of industrial beginnings
to fragments of plastic and everyday life.
Two columns recall the sawmill that once stood here,
embedding rusted tools and relics from Bend’s industrial past.
Together, they form a layered record of transformation
from timber to technology,
from craft to consumption.
The installation reflects our shifting relationship
with the natural world,
revealing how the ease and allure of modern life
intertwine with lasting environmental consequence.