‘Bush Hut Rainwater Farm’, 2018, is a site-responsive sculpture, that conceptually builds upon my recent series of rainwater collection structures. I am constructing it using modified ‘bushcraft’ techniques, basically using things I could carry with me as a wilderness survival kit: a hatchet, knife, powerless hand drill, a small saw, and string.  The materials used are collected wood, bamboo, hemp, jute, straw, and walnut oil. These are all materials that are safe for the land. The structure could simply disintegrate, if abandoned, returning to the earth without trace. Certainly it isn’t a new idea to use natural materials, but it is poignant to question artistic and cultural modes of production. The building of the structure was meaningful to myself, as a ritual of materialist purification. I realized that if art can play any role in sustainability, our consumption and production will challenge a complex and broken system of human-nature, without being consumed by that very system. We are biologically born of Nature, but are ushered into a dualistic existence where that very Nature is at odds with Society.
As a structure for re-centering the self, ‘Bush Hut Rainwater Farm’ is a meditation space, with a viewing window, which could also function as a wildlife 'blind'. It catches and guides rainwater down to native plants, transplanted around the perimeter of the Hut. To me, this forms a symbiotic relationship between 'the person' and the plants.
The structures we bring into the land can be an offering, and acknowledge interdependence. The Western dwelling is so often an intervention onto Nature. I wish to evoke a more sacred relationship to the land through my structures.