Taming This Most Unruly Nature
In this body of work, I explore the garden as a site of female agency, creativity, and shared experience. Continuing my inquiry into the relationship between nature and American culture, I look to the garden as a symbol of female relationships and resiliency, and a site in which women have played a dominant role in determining human relationships within space and nature. Sourcing imagery of plant and animal species from my own garden and those of my mother and maternal grandmother; I have created complex patterns representing each of these women. Brightly colored prints overlay large round wooden panels that fit together slot and groove into intertwined 3-dimensional pairs. These tumbleweed-like combinations evoke the connectedness, influence, and tensions between these personalities. Bounded by fragments of an abstracted fence bearing images of storm clouds, tumbleweeds, devils claws, and goat-head thorns, these gardens allude to shared knowledge and tradition, and efforts to rewrite harsh natural realities.