Forest Production investigates agricultural and industrial processes in Georgia responding to the growing demand for corrugated cardboard worldwide. Georgia’s production pine forests cover vast land tracts throughout the state. Their timber products include paper pulp used for cardboard – one of Georgia’s leading economic industries. Fueled by the explosion in e-commerce over the last decade, cardboard boxes are an increasingly present part of human experience. The experience one has opening an amazon package ties them to farmland and production plants shaped by agrarian policies developed in the post-civil war South. The cardboard boxes are incised with laser cut imagery of pine forest textures and scenes of timber cultivation, to reclaim the materiality, objectness, or identity that they lose as they change from natural resources to anonymous ubiquitous supply logistics.

My investigation into the process of production forests to cardboard sheet to global shipping object attempts to look deeper than the dichotomy of good versus bad, sustainable versus unsustainable, ecologically verdant versus industrial monoculture. The larger view of the industry, and our consumption of the cardboard box has positives and negatives that defy simple labels. The deeper dive exposes an issue with great benefits and drawbacks which ask for a balanced examination in order to achieve real familiarity.