Space Phrasing: An Artist Statement

I make art to create an empathetic encounter through work that envisions a culture/nature relationship mutually arising in a complexity of interexchange.

I strive to imbue the work with a maximum level of complexity and visual vibration to ferry a viewer through a psychologically imaginative and emotional space. I hope the encounter leads to a moment of personal recall, an imaginative leap of consciousness, or both.

As a multi-disciplinary artist dedicated to exploring the intersection of nature, art, and design, I have maintained a 25 year studio practice integrating art and landscape design. My work is guided by a continuous exploration of process and materials as a way of making a contemplative image. Through an array of pattern making, hieroglyphic creation, diorama building, photography, and techniques of collage and painting I attempt to create images and places to reflect upon our ever fluid cognitive and emotional being, embodied in an atmosphere and upon a geological ground.

Dante Ortiz (b.1975) graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with Fine Arts and Landscape Architecture degrees. While there he laid the groundwork for a lifelong hybrid practice integrating art and landscape design. Dante maintains a studio art practice in Boulder CO and is a co-founder of Root Volume, a landscape design/build cooperative in Oakland CA. His paintings and installation work have been shown in northern and southern California, Boulder and Denver (CO), Providence (RI), Portland (OR), and in Cordoba, Spain. He's designed and built gardens in the San Francisco Bay Area, throughout Colorado, New York City, Kauai, and Los Angeles.