Anya Sheldon

Studio Art major, Environmental Studies minor

The Western World must reorient its understanding of humans' role on the planet if we are to reject climate change-induced suffering. My work weaves in and out of fear and hope, the familiar and unfamiliar, and loss and discovery in the attempt to understand how our minds need to change. My recent work is in conversation with the drive to connect with your surroundings. I believe it is innate in all people but fatally dulled by capitalist values (such as growth and efficiency) and systems of oppression. I operate in the realm of the uncanny and surreal for its capacity to draw our attention to things we have stopped seeing or hearing. My pieces, which are often small and incorporated into public spaces, require sensory awareness and close-up engagement for their consumption. I am especially drawn to the forms of invertebrates and fungi and generally look to nature for visual inspiration. I am in constant evaluation of the ethics of my practice, with a growing prioritization of materials that embody inclusion and do not contribute to waste or emissions. My use of found images in particular has taught me to embrace the image as a vehicle for knowledge, take ownership over barrages of information, and grapple with my own biases.

Human Ecology

cut paper collage

In transplanting disparate images from print media into a complex web of narratives, I explore the nature of belonging to an ecosystem. Each collage began as a small rectangular composition that underwent decomposition, recomposition, colonization of architecture, growth, and, with the evacuation of the College, stasis. The work engaged the ideas about limits to growth, rhizome theory, definitions of nature, and sense of place that have been at the forefront of my mind in college.

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