Nina Elder is a painter, drawer, and amateur construction worker. She grew up in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and New Mexico where she cultivated a curiosity about gravel pits, mines, and lumber mills. Her work examines the visual evidence of land use in the American West and its cycles of production, consumption, and waste. After earning her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, Nina returned to northern New Mexico where she co-founded an off-the-grid artist residency program called PLAND: Practice Liberating Art through Necessary Dislocation. Through paintings, drawings, and installations, she endeavors to illuminate that the contemporary landscape is the physical manifestation of modern needs, economies, policies, and powers.