Refracted growth

Using the shadows of flower petals as a stand in for memories of people and places lost, Refracted Growth is a series of abstract wall mounted collage installations the dealing with concepts of memory and transformation using the language of botanical c-print photograms. They are mounted on laser-cut plexiglass.

 

I grew up in gardens, surrounded by a family of gardeners. Flowers have been consistently in my work for decades, representing both memories of people and places from my past, but also a connection to the traditional analog photographic processes that ground much of my work.

 

In the darkroom, I break the flowers down into their elements, and make color photograms of them. I choose the flowers based on my own personal memories, or occasionally because of their cultural symbolism. Instead of putting them under glass, I pile them on the paper, throw them in the dark, so there is an element of chance in how the prints turn out.

 

In the studio, I cut these prints out piece by piece, following the petal structures on the page. I work with the photograms of petals themselves, and sometimes the black exposed photo paper I cut them out of, drawing with them. Shapes and color grow and mutate from the original petal structures into collaged installations that climb up the walls.

 

The shapes morph from the original flower forms, like how memories change. They’re a shadow of an object, deconstructed, and reconstructed, over time.