The Scat Project
The Scat Project, presented at The Cincinnati Contemporary, is an on-going multi-year effort aimed at documenting wild animals located on the artist’s farm in the piedmont region of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.
The 50-acre farm, maintained for decades as a place devoted to providing habitat for wild plants and animals, harbors a remarkable diversity of species and habitats, including a several-acre tract of virgin old growth forest. The installation’s infrared video footage of nighttime animal activities was filmed in the surrounding forests where fox, deer, raccoons, bears, turkeys, skunks, and coyotes live and find ample food sources in their native habitats.
18 numbered archival color photographs represent collected and preserved wild animal scat samples. Animal scat identification was undertaken by the artist in collaboration with the University of Nebraska Center for Wildlife Damage Management. These photographs are coupled with correspondingly numbered hygienically preserved and sealed scat samples identified with the time, day, year, food contents and exact collection location for each sample.
Accompanying the photographs and samples, an aerial map of the artist’s farm features numbered collection sites .