Statement, Aaron Delehanty:

My practice consists of two perspectives on the issue of the man-made and the natural world.  

I am a Staff-Artist at a Natural History Museum.  Each day I reflect on issues regarding the natural world and anthropology.  Not only does my job effect the way I think ...but it is because of the way I think that I have my job.   I speak daily with people who lives are spent trying to understand the word around us.  I work with these people to interpret their work.  My job is something like a full-time-art-residency where I can work with scientists (Anthropologist, Archeologists, Paleontologist, Botanist, etc..) to make objects that tell the story of their research. The symbols I make communicate special narratives to the public, teaching about animal behavior and anthrolopology.   When at my day-job I study and research to build such things as dioramas of ancient civilizations and animal habitats, or I re-create/re-discover ancient methods of making by replicating the museum cultural artifacts.

Conversely, back in my studio I create different worlds, ones not necessarily bound by the same laws of realism and physics- they are un-natural-worlds where you find strange lighting and disruptions to the order of things.  There are un-natural behaviors.  My studio practice brings together animals that share habitats that should not be sharing the same habitat.  I play around with ideas of taxonomy, animal categories, and how we systematize the natural world.

You are going to contemplate my images and come away with a sense that something is not right in these unknown ecologies. You might feel an unease that is a cause to re-center.  The goal if work is to strike curiosity in how you fit in the world, as an animal yourself.