The American landscape is a quarrel about what it is. Perhaps no better metaphor exists to demonstrate this fact than ongoing battled between historic preservationists and property-rights protectionists. From 1990 to 2000 I toured many sites in the upper Southland that were undergoing various processes of veneration, desecration, or neglect. As both conduit and hindrance to human mobility, the terrain itself dictated human activity, by providing or denying opportunities for military and economic development. Learn more. Click on thumbnails

From 1990 to 1998 I embarked on a project that set me on a new trajectory. Inspired by expeditionary art shown to me by Roy Goodman, then curator at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, I planned to retrace George Catlin’s first Missouri River journey; collecting images, artifacts, specimens, and conversations from indigenous communities along the way. When I was unable to secure sufficient funding to support the project, my brother Peter encouraged me to consider Virginia battlefields, where new battles raged between preservationists and property-rights activists. Following a tour of the battlefields surrounding Richmond and Petersburg, Peter offered me his home as a base of operations. What followed was eight years of travel through the Old Confederacy, and exhibitions devoted to the project in Asheville, NC; Caspar, WY;  Charlottesville, VA; Denver, CO; Fairhope, AL; Greensboro, NC; Greenville NC, Johnson City, TN; Milwaukee, WI; Newport News, VA; Norfolk, VA, Philadelphia, PA; Richmond, VA, Salisbury, NC, and Sheridan, WY. Works from this project are found in the collections of Asheville Art Museum, Chrysler Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum,  Museum of the Southwest and the National Park Service, Harper’s Ferry, WV.