Artist Statement

This exhibition is the culmination of my graduate research. Working in a subtractive manner across the mediums of ceramics, printmaking, and drawing, this work explores the layered experience of emotional labor. Through the written and unwritten language of flowers, these works seek to convey the movements through which we heal.

During the Victorian Era in England, which ran from 1837 to 1901, manners, morality, and propriety were held in the highest regard, and it was considered improper and socially taboo to outwardly express emotion. This was especially true when it came to themes of an affectionate nature. As a result, it became common in this period for individuals to communicate their feelings non-verbally through the subtle exchange of flowers. Books like John Henry Ingram’s Flora Symbolica were used as flower-to-English dictionaries to translate sentiments into stems.   

The flowers in this body of work were chosen based on their translation as they pertained to the emotions and memories that I have been processing over the last three years. Each piece is titled with the English translation of the flowers depicted as defined by Flora Symbolica.

Sweetbriar: I Wound to Heal is about human emotion. It’s about the hurt we carry. It’s about the memories that settle in our minds like smoke hangs in a valley. The memories we can feel and taste and smell but can’t quite see. The memories that leave their scent on your skin. It’s about hindsight. The processing of could’ves, should’ves, and would’ves. The reconciliation of anger and shame. It’s about a tightness in your chest that feels like the shrinking of your heart. A tightness that reminds you emphatically and urgently that something is wrong, something is broken. It’s about how we heal.