Harvest examines the legacy of colonization in North America through a vessel filled with symbols of conquest, extraction, forced assimilation, and loss. The obscured figure and roots speak to identity, memory, and an enduring connection to the land.

Harvest is about engaging with history thoughtfully rather than speaking for Indigenous communities. It is my personal interpretation of a historical legacy, created from my own perspective as a descendant of white European colonists.

I am angry. And I feel betrayed by the falsehoods, omissions, and sanitized versions of history we are taught throughout our years in American schools.

Because—

We were not taught history.

We were taught a version of it.

We were conditioned, subtly and gradually, to accept mythology as fact.

I shared numerous elementary school classrooms with Indigenous students. We all listened to the same stories about Christopher Columbus as a noble historical figure and his “discovery” of this land. We all listened to the same stories of Thanksgiving, goodwill, shared resources, and kindness.

I cannot speak to what those lessons meant to the Indigenous children sitting beside me. I can only recognize now how profoundly different those stories must look when your own history is the one being erased from them.

Harvest grew from my anger at the legacy of European colonization in North America and the systems of conquest, forced assimilation, and extraction that continue to shape this continent. And from my anger at the lies by omission, the falsehoods, and the fairytales American children are taught; stories that sanitize our history, erase the people who suffered through it, and leave us condemned to repeat what we refuse to remember.

I am deeply interested in history.

I create work from historical source material, and I want to be clear that Harvest is about confronting the legacy of colonization rather than romanticizing Native people or attempting to speak on behalf of Indigenous communities.

This piece will not mean the same thing to everyone who encounters it. Some may find it uncomfortable. Some may find it moving. Some may question whether a non-Indigenous artist should make a work like this at all.

Those responses are valid and part of the conversation.

Art about historical trauma can provoke very different reactions from people whose relationships to that history are profoundly different. I don’t expect Harvest to provide answers. I hope it instead encourages us to look more honestly at the history we inherited, and to question what we were taught to believe about it.