2019–2022
Dried Flower Ramblings
Projects:
Studies in Randomization
Five Years
Wedding Invitation
Between 2017 and 2019, I turned 30, graduated from grad school, got a new job, apartment and started dating my now-husband. So for a while I was getting sent a lot of flowers. Lots and lots of flowers. And I let every single one of them dry up. I told myself it was about preserving these beautiful memories, but honestly it was just a happy accident born from forgetting to replace the water or throw them out. Eventually I knew it was time to get rid of them, but I really felt like I needed to make use of this act of needless saving. The documentation and unnecessary sorting and organizing of this extensive collection of dried flowers was something I found really interesting. It ultimately became a lesson in iteration + process. It gave importance and assigning meaning to something that’s temporary/ephemeral. Making projects out of nothing. Below are three.
Studies in Randomization (2022) delves into the process of selection at random and attempting to find order and systems in the presentation of its results. Using the eyedropper tool in Adobe Illustrator, I collected swatches by randomly but methodically selecting 3 pixel swatches from each of the individual forms from 3 of my favorite photos. They became posters of sorts —the studies becoming formalized in these series of compositions.
From there I became interested in this process of archiving colors and forms from nature and turning them digital. I wanted to begin to bring order to the set of swatches I collected — turn these random selections into my own color system like pantone. While creating a system for the colors, I also turned the natural forms into flat digital vector shapes, removing the color, material and textural information from them.
5 Years (begun in 2020, and still unresolved) is an unordered organization of memories and flowers collected over a period of time. A love letter to a city and a time that continues to evolve as I learn more in hindsight.
Perhaps its most practical usage was invitations and collateral for my pandemic zoom wedding in 2020.