Artist Statement 

“Man is an inveterate and incorrigible meddler, never content to leave anything as he finds it, always seeking to alter and – as he sees it – to improve.” -Christopher Lever

Unmanaged fragments of the non-human natural world are all around us. Should we consider the unbridled offspring of human introduced plants and animals wild? If not, how should we define these familiar but ill-defined cousins of what we conventionally call nature? This everyday version of nature, which I define as The Re-Natural Environment, is a mixture of native and human-introduced species that survive, and sometimes thrive, in the marginal spaces of human-dominated landscapes.

My projects investigate examples of the innumerable ways humans have impacted and are continuing to impact the shape of the natural environment. Of particular interest are examples of how non-human nature is adapting to respond to our domineering presence, and finding ways to shift away from destructive models of interaction with the plants and animals that we encounter in our everyday lives.

The work, done mostly under the banner of my organizational identity, The Society for a Re-Natural Environment , takes the form of exhibitions, sanctioned and unsanctioned public projects, websites, multi-media presentations, and participatory models of re-environmental programs. I use a variety of media to provide people with opportunities to notice, find value in, and develop positive relationships with everyday fragments of wild non-human nature. I also work to reveal little known facts about the re-natural environments we encounter every day.

-Brian D Collier