Ampersand is pleased to present Drift, an exhibition of collage work by Portland artist Francesca Berrini and San Francisco artist Alexis Mackenzie. Both artists, in divergent and dynamic ways, deconstruct not only the physical materials they work with, but also common notions of cartography, political division, taxonomy, elemental erosion and the very visible impact of human activity on built and natural environments. Exploring a new direction in her work, Mackenzie's recent collages resemble topographic maps and visual signs of erosion in nature itself. "I see natural processes echoed in the way I work with photographs," notes Mackenize, "breaking down the image structure, working against the existing shapes and forms to gradually wear them away completely." Cyclical erosion, however, always results in new forms, a notion that expands upon Mackenzie's working practice wherein the process of collage is a continuation of the life cycle of discarded paper materials. With titles like Lilium Auratum and Erythronium Hendersoni, there is a visible dissonance between the finished work and the scientific name of the source image, implying that taxonomy itself is as susceptible to shifts as the natural world it attempts to define. In a similar way, Francesca Berrini's reconstructed maps draw attention to ever shifting global divisions and the arbitrary borders mankind has historically etched across the face of the Earth. "The colorful geometry of political divisions," writes Berrini, "laid over the organic forms of continents, is as incongruous in appearance as our actual physical interventions in the natural world. My inward exploration of political concepts made manifest in fictional landscapes parallels the original intent of the materials I repurpose in their scientific desire to chart and document the world." Comprised of thousands of individual pieces of torn and reconstituted found maps, her works are richly textured groupings of non-existent land masses, rivers, veins of transportation and city landscapes. Like Mackenzie, Berrini's seamless command of her medium creates a cartographic illusion equal to the natural world we by turns marvel at and attempt to destroy.