Stand Up is a modular work unfolding across a dozen Baltic cherrywood panels, 92 x 92 cm each. This project brings together silhouette drawings in gold leaf of different animals from the boreal forest, as represented in Thornton W. Burgess’s early 20th-century literary works. His tales have occupied the imagination of children for generations and convey ecological values by depicting the cooperative relationships of forest animals. The gold leaf makes the work shimmering and variable depending on ambient light, time of day, and viewer position.

In this proposed work, the animals stand on two legs. This humanizing posture of animal representation is a call for empathy, a recognition of oneself in the other. In addition to honoring wild animal life, this work is an invitation to dialogue, an opportunity to see oneself in the animal silhouette, the living Other.