Kate MacDowell.

My friend Drew recently turned me onto Kate MacDowell's work. Her sculptures are at once beautifully, white, porcelain scenarios then suddenly tragic happenstance. Kate marries environmental degradation, mythology, art history and literal figures of speech within her work. Each piece is meticulously hand sculpted out of porcelain. She sees "each piece as a captured and preserved specimen, a painstaking record of endangered natural forms and a commentary on our own culpability." Stunning.

Check out Kate's latest work used in yesterday's New York Times Magazine a piece on ecopsychology, which she tells me is very closely related to the themes in her work.