Jenn Egelfeld (b. 1995) Fair Lawn, NJ; is a multidisciplinary artist who works in book binding, papermaking, and digital fabrication. With growing concern over climate change and environmental degradation, she became interested in the way humans perceive nature as separate from themselves and their creations. She received her BFA in Studio Art from Florida State University and currently lives in Tampa, FL.


My work is informed by the ever-growing threat of environmental collapse, which has prompted the question of what can be done to mitigate these effects. While environmental action has largely been popularized as an individual pursuit, it’s apparent that the solution does not lie solely in recycling, installing solar panels, or any individual action (as nice as they may be to practice). There are a near infinite number of ways people can address these issues, but at the core of the problems lies, I believe, a mental demarcation between what is “human” and what is “nature” that allows people (myself included) to remain apathetic or even hostile to the state of the environment. While this divide may well be impossible to fully close, I still seek to criticize separatist notions of man vs. nature and explore the categorical ambiguity of material that has been touched and refined by the human hand. So I pose the question: is a tree, touched, a high rise?