Heather uses photography to document human-made ecotones (ecology + tension), representing human attempts to control natural systems. Examples include the sharp boundary line between farmland and watershed, farmland and city, port and wetland, among others. The images in Land Grab are from a series of aerial photographs Heather took in the 2000s. Due to the fact that she shoots while traveling on commercial flights, some of her images are obscured by jet fuel, smog, cloud cover, uncontrolled lighting and weather conditions, frosty or cracked airplane windows, which adds distinctive and imperfect elements to the photographs.

Heather presented the work above at Fetherston Gallery in Seattle in May 2009.

“Inspired by the recent economic downturn, as well as the historical land-grab of the West, my artist husband Matthew and I selected hundreds of my aerial photographs and installed them in an acre-type grid (to scale) in the gallery. Each 5”x5” photograph was available for purchase on the spot and left with the buyer at the point of sale. Throughout the show we documented the evolution of this interactive project as each piece of the whole was sold leaving a void where there once was land/art. It was our goal that by the end of the exhibition all that’s left is the abandoned infrastructure that was supporting Land Grab.”

Heather uses photography to document human-made ecotones (ecology + tension), representing human attempts to control natural systems. Examples include the sharp boundary line between farmland and watershed, farmland and city, port and wetland, among others. The images in Land Grab are from a series of aerial photographs Heather has taken over the past five years. Due to the fact that she shoots while traveling on commercial flights, some of her images are obscured by jet fuel, smog, cloud cover, uncontrolled lighting and weather conditions, frosty or cracked airplane windows, which adds distinctive and imperfect elements to the photographs.