Still began, pre-pandemic, with a picture of a 100-year-old broken water glass etched with flowers, one of the few objects I inherited from my maternal grandmother Polexeni. Even destroyed, it was a beautiful object. Arranged in still life, its function is subsumed by the photographic process.
Other still lives followed, performances in natural light, limited to the area on or around a small steel table. I arranged objects I owned; flowers I grew; fruit from friends; and pictures. Some of the art is mine, some of it is found and appropriated.
I was inspired and horrified by local and global events. The days passed by with the pandemic raging, continued racial injustice, the anxiety of a deeply polarized American society, and the specter of global warming becoming more and more real. The unease weighed against life spent indoors, away from all but my immediate family, locked in a surreal series of snow days. The pictures tell side-ways stories reflecting on particular moments, the news, a life lived, a death, motherhood, and relationships.
Flowers are metaphors for life and for death. They memorialize deep personal and communal loss, and celebrate milestones. Flowers appear in mythology, art history, and poetry, tying the past to the present. Flowers are weighty and ephemeral symbols. There is wonder in interpreting flowers, as well as a constant awareness of their death — their delicate lives reflect an unease about our own.
In the summer of 2021 this work was shown intertwined with my dear friend Julie Gearan’s paintings of still lifes at the AS220 Project Space in Providence, RI. The title of the show To See Takes Time came from a quote by Georgia O’Keefe. “Nobody sees a flower — really — it is so small — we haven't time — and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”
