The Microbial Sublime departs from the historical legacy of the Hudson River School to reframe the landscape for the Anthropocene. Replacing traditional oil and canvas with the tools of modern biology, the project utilizes living media to depict the true evolving, microscopic ecosystems. I collect organic matter and human debris from sites across the Hudson Valley—including Olana—and arrange them as living assemblages within petri dishes. Cultivated without further intervention, the naturally occurring microbes are left to bloom into unpredictable, autonomous landscapes.

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Where 19th-century painters sought the sublime in vast, untamed vistas viewed from a distinctly anthropocentric vantage point, this work looks downward. By shifting the gaze to the microscopic scale, the project decenters the human observer, focusing instead on complex, ungovernable microbial worlds with which our own existence is inextricably entangled.

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While early landscape painters galvanized conservation efforts, they often did so by erasing the human presence to construct an illusion of pristine wilderness. By embedding found synthetic debris directly into these biological cultures, The Microbial Sublime recognizes the human footprint in the landscape. Here, the boundary between nature and artifact dissolves; the microbes do not shy away from our detritus—they actively colonize and metabolize it. Ultimately, the work rejects the myth of a "pure" nature to which we can retreat. Instead, it proposes an updated view of the Anthropocene: an entangled, messy future where a new kind of sublime emerges, one demanding our active acknowledgment and responsibility.