My studio practice focuses on an interest in taxidermy, natural history dioramas, and anachronistic museum displays. This series was initially inspired by the dioramas in the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where as a youngster I spent many hours, awestruck. Through those iconic dioramas I was introduced to landscape painting, sculpture, and installation long before I knew what any of it meant or that I was destined to become an artist. Other aspects of the work are inspired by memories of visiting my grandfather’s live poultry store in Hoboken, New Jersey, as a youth. Joe’s Live Poultry sat on a flatiron-shaped lot in a seam between residential and industrial areas of Hoboken. Chickens, ducks, and rabbits were kept in cages or roamed free in the yard, and lived a sort of purgatory, waiting to become someone’s meal. This mashup of high and low, exotic and domestic, is an important dichotomy for me as I seek to come to terms with the uneasy relationship we have with the natural world.