Artist Statement
for
“Garden Books” Series

In the summer of 2005 I started my first garden after moving into my first home. The “Garden Book” series started that year because of my first garden. I really fell in love with the gardening process the idea for the book form came from my discovery of journals kept by gardeners. These journals have a photo of the plant and details about where the plants are in the garden and how well they did. I was attracted to this book idea and decided to explore my version of a garden journal; creating artworks from plants grown within my within my garden.

For me my “Garden Books” became containers for plants from my garden. The structure of the book is cover pages of cotton fabric dyed in tea; the inner pages are of silk organza dyed in madder root for a burgundy red color. Between the inner pages the plants are pressed, for example: caladium leaves, dahlias. In the pressing process, many times, the plants become unrecognizable or drastically altered from their original forms. In pressing the fresh plants, liquids from the plants permeate the inner and outer fabrics staining them with color. If the plant has green leaves or stems then chlorophyll will stain the outer cover of the book. Once the plants have dried, I then take the outer covers and spend time stitching on them. There are patterns to be found on the surface of the cloth left from the plant stains and I use stitches to emphasize certain areas of the covers. The covers become garden maps and the stitches are trail markers. The final part is to bind the book together through stitching all three layers together.

Reading about plant lore has influenced my work. The history of plants, Victorian plant language, and medieval herbal language are fascinating to me. I find this adds layers to my own thinking about the symbolic meaning behind the plants I use in my work. I also like studying maps of gardens. This comes from my favorite childhood book “Miss Jaster’s Garden,” by N.M. Bodecker. In the book the end pages are a map of a garden written about in the book.

For me the work is about the process of collecting plants and my personal relationship with nature and natural objects, bringing me closer to my mother and grandmother whom both were gardeners. All of my work is about process. The final piece is important but the piece is also a visual journal of my process; showing the steps I went through to create the piece. Process is as important as the completed work; both having equal weight.