Born: Jackson, Michigan, 1966 Lives: Brooklyn, NY Work Jason Middlebrook makes wood and Styrofoam sculptures that convincingly imitate both organic and human-made structures. Sited both indoors and out in urban locations, his work addresses the ambivalent relationship toward nature in contemporary life, in which the beauty of nature has become subject to synthetic imitation and artificial arrangement. In Strata Garden 2000, part of a recent show at the Whitney Museum at Phillip Morris in New York City, Middlebrook constructed a 53-foot long wall of wood and Styrofoam that ran along the window of the gallery facing Park Avenue. On the side visible from the street, the painted Styrofoam looked like strata, or layers of earth, from which silk flowers rise. From inside, the wall was painted to look like it had been constructed of pink and grey stone, matching the materials and colors of the building's interior. Middlebrook's ability to make the same material look like both nature and architecture brings to the surface both the physical history lying beneath the concrete of Manhattan and the urban desire for green space. A 1999 work entitled Grand Entrance at The Commons was a realistic, full-scale rendition of a monumental stone gate commonly found at the entry to a private estate or suburban sub-division. Traditionally intended to keep people out, the imposing gate in this case took on a cartoon-like quality when one realized the "rocks" were merely painted Styrofoam. The ambiguous relationship between the natural rock forms and the artificial stone gate is part of Middlebrook's on-going investigation into how people construct their living environments.