Born Between Two World
Artist. Scientist. Sailor. The story behind Selva Tierra.
Roots
I was born in Ohio into a Mennonite dairy farming family — a community built on simplicity, mutual care, deep relationship with land, and the radical idea that how you live every day is a moral act.
I was also born Costa Rican.Growing up between those two worlds — the quiet discipline of Mennonite farm life and the wild abundance of the Costa Rican jungle — gave me something I did not fully understand until much later. A sense that human beings are most alive when they are genuinely connected to the land they live on. And most lost when they are not.That conviction has followed me across oceans, through university programs I built myself, onto the decks of sailing yachts, into tattoo studios, hemp farms, and graduate schools on three continents.I am Selva Tierra.This is not a brand I built. It is a life I have lived — as an artist, a scientist, a sailor, and a student of the natural world. Every painting, every garment, every word written here is part of the same work: to create art that moves people, and to build regenerative and resilient systems that restore our relationship with the earth.That work began on a dairy farm in Ohio and in the jungles of Costa Rica.It is not finished yet.Stay connected. Stay wild.— RD, Founder & Artist, Selva Tierra
The Art
Every piece begins from the same place — a life spent between worlds. The bird series is a meditation on freedom and the mystery of existence itself. Birds have always lived at the threshold — between earth and sky, between the visible and the invisible, between instinct and transcendence. Ancient cultures across every continent understood this. Birds carry messages. They navigate by forces science is still learning to name. They cross borders without permission, carrying entire ecosystems in their movements. I have felt that same movement in my own life. Traversing the folds of human experience across continents, cultures, languages, and ways of being. Never fully belonging to one world, always carrying something from the last one into the next. In painting birds I am painting what I know most intimately — the experience of living between dimensions, and finding that the in-between is not a place of loss but of profound and hard-won freedom. These works are available as original paintings, fine art prints, and on organic cotton — bringing the threshold into your daily life.
The Mission
Selva Tierra exists at the intersection of art, ecology, and regenerative design. The dream at the heart of everything is this — to purchase land in Costa Rica and build an ecological training center. A living institute where regenerative agriculture, community design, biological science, and indigenous wisdom converge. A place where these ideas are not discussed but demonstrated. Not taught in classrooms but grown in soil, built with hands, and lived daily. Every painting sold, every garment purchased, every idea shared here moves us closer to that land and closer to that institute. You are not a customer. You are a contributor to something being built.
The Full Story
Jungle Earth — A Mission
Some lives move in a straight line.
Mine has moved like water — finding
its way around every obstacle, always
returning to the same direction.
I was born in Ohio into a Mennonite dairy
farming family and into a Costa Rican
identity simultaneously. Two completely
different relationships with land,
community, and what it means to live
with integrity. I did not choose to be
born between those worlds. But everything
I have built since has been shaped by both.
───
THE EDUCATION
My academic path was unconventional by
design. Unsatisfied with existing programs,
I built my own undergraduate degree across
four universities — uniting biology, ecology,
agriculture, and architecture into a degree
in Regenerative Community Development,
completed in the high desert of Prescott,
Arizona.
That foundation took me to Switzerland,
where I worked at a boarding school, and
then back to Costa Rica to claim my
citizenship. I earned admission to a
masters program in Agroecology in Norway —
a dream I could not afford to pursue.
So rather than surrender the vision,
I went to sea to fund it.
───
THE OCEAN
Working as a deckhand in the Bahamas,
the British Virgin, Mexico and Canada, then as a mate
on charter and private yachts. Experience on the ocean, taught me things no
classroom could. The ocean has its own
curriculum — patience, humility, precision,
and a respect for forces larger than yourself.
I eventually earned my 100-ton Captain's
license with the US Coast Guard. The sea
does not care about your credentials or
your intentions. It asks only whether you
are present, prepared, and humble enough
to listen. That is a lesson I have carried
into everything else I have built.
───
THE BUILDING
Between voyages I kept building. I returned
home when my family needed me. I completed
a Master Gardeners certification. I attempted
to establish a drug rehabilitation facility
in Costa Rica with partners whose vision did
not match their integrity — and learned more
from that failure than from most of my
successes.
I learned carpentry in Atlanta. I earned
admission to a masters program in City
Resilience Design and Management in
Barcelona, which I completed in Colorado —
researching industrial hemp as a tool for
climate adaptation and carbon mitigation,
managing a hemp farm, and consulting with
a startup in the emerging industry.
Through all of it I kept making art.
Painting, drawing, and eventually tattooing —
a practice that brought everything together.
The precision of science. The philosophy
of ecology. The intimacy of mark-making
on skin and canvas.
───
CREDENTIALS
B.S. Regenerative Community Development
M.S. City Resilience Design & Management
USCG 100-Ton Captain's License
Master Gardener Certification
Hemp Farm Manager & Carpenter
Tattoo Artist
Costa Rican & US National
───
THE WORK
Selva Tierra is not a brand I built
to fill a market gap.
It is the synthesis of every chapter above —
the farm in Ohio, the jungle in Costa Rica,
the ocean, the soil, the ink, the science.
An ongoing attempt to create art that moves
people and build systems that restore our
relationship with the earth.
The dream at the center of it all remains
unchanged — to purchase land in Costa Rica
and build an ecological training center.
A living institute where regenerative
agriculture, community design, biological
science, and indigenous wisdom are not
taught in lectures but demonstrated in
the landscape itself.
Every print sold and every garment worn
is a contribution to that land.
You are not buying a product.
You are investing in something being built.
This is the work.
It is not finished yet.
Stay connected. Stay wild.
— RD, Founder & Artist, Selva Tierra
WHEN YOU PURCHASE FROM SELVA TIERRA, YOU ARE PART OF THIS MISSION.
Every print sold, every garment purchased moves us closer to the land, and closer to the institute. You are not buying a product. You are investing in a vision of what is possible when human beings remember their relationship with the earth.
This is the work. This has always been the work.
Stay connected. Stay wild.