Ring the Changes series
In the fall of 2006, artists Davis & Davis killed what little lawn they had at their Los Angeles home and set about replacing it with drought-tolerant plants. As the team collected eventually over 200 varieties of cacti and succulents for their new drier landscape, they became fascinated by the forms and colors of the plants and started to photograph them.

Xerophytes such as cacti and other succulents evolved some 50 million years ago when the Cenozoic period produced regionally arid conditions. With their water-filled stems and leaves and deep root systems, xerophytes are uniquely adapted for hot, dry climates.

Humans on this planet now see increased desertification, rising coastal waters, extreme weather, droughts, crop failures, and new disease vectors appearing as a result of global warming. We have no choice but to adapt, as xerophytes long ago adapted, to this new changing climate.

During the past two years, the artists have traveled to Alberta, Death Valley, Ireland, the Salton Sea and many other locations to shoot photographs for this new body of work. The resulting images, along with images from NASA and other archives, artistically and ominously document the evidence, results, history, and causes of global warming.

While the multiples portray connections between the common name, form, or color/pattern of xerophytes found in the team's garden with man-made objects and things found in the natural landscape, the iconic single images portray the reality of global warming more symbolically.

Childish Things series
Those who have managed to save a favorite toy from childhood are aware that a kewpie doll, a teddy bear, or a plastic soldier can be a prodigious storehouse of fond memories. Just as cherished toys recall the joys and warmth of a happy childhood, so lost and abandoned toys retain repressed memories of prepubescent trauma and the deep-seated guilt associated with the playing of forbidden games.

While abandoned toys are rejected outright, lost toys represent something evicted from consciousness as in a Freudian slip. Either way, the result is the same: the contents of the childish unconscious at large in the world. As found in parking lots, on sidewalks, or in thrift stores, these toys lack meaningful context and purpose – a situation we attempt to correct.

For the series, Childish Things, we stage mini-psychodramas on miniature sets with the toys portraying the conflicted children who left them behind. We then photograph the resulting tableaus with a shallow focus that suggests both the bleariness and the selectivity of memory. By these means, we hope to achieve for the conflicted, former toy-owners a measure of catharsis by proxy.