Blind Spot in the Garden

This series explores questions about the construction of scientific knowledge and how knowledge is manipulated in relation to nature, technology, evolution and the environment. The work is informed by subjective experience along with scientific research and critical theories about natural history. It attempts to intersect domestic and scientific realms as it explores the myths or blind spots that normalize current environmental crises.

While star gazing, I was asked, “Where did everything come from and how did the very first thing that was, come to be?” My children’s questions about their world began at the level of scrutiny where a system of reason had not yet been taken for granted. Their questions recalled my own early questions of wonder as a child, questions that eventually led me to diverse research in the fields of physics, paleontology, anthropology, biology, botany and geology evident in the work. Their questions have made me look more closely not only at the micro and macrocosmic aspects of nature in one’s backyard, but also at the positioned views around the concept of nature. Early 20th century physicist Heisenberg stated, “What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” And more recently physicist Ursula Franklin pointed out that we never ask, “What will nature do?”