About the painting: Bloom
Inspired by the intensity of the summer sun and the beauty of the sunflower, this piece explores ideas of duality and appreciation. The complimentary palette brings out the depth of the colors, reminding us that experiencing one extreme sometimes helps us feel gratitude for the other. About the pendant: Bloom Where You Grow Captured in the lovely prose poem that inspired this piece is the overwhelming power and beauty of the bloom of life, and the equal, if less overt, power of the other stages; the seed with its potential and the memory with all it carries. The pendant uses found objects to mirror the vibrancy and intricacy of the blooming “bejeweled” bottom with the delicacy and simplicity of the single gem shining above. The continuity of colors and materials shows that the top and bottom are one and the same. About the assemblage: Bloom Where Your Grow As I was walking to pick up my car from the shop, I couldn’t help but to notice many natural treasures along my way that I then began collecting in my arms. It was heavy, but worth it. This root ball was one of those treasures. The orchid is the national flower of Venezuela and it is a plant that does not need solid ground to bloom. |
Bloom Where You Grow
My freckled friend grew it for me from seed. She brought it over, her face beaming like a sunflower, though she was merely holding a tiny pot of dirt with an even tinier green shoot. She gave me instructions as to how to care for it, laughing all the while, knowing that though I could beat her across the lake, this flower’s sweet bud had little chance of surviving in my care. Her gesture was itself a tentative seed of hope, glowing above the gloom of the purple storm of my diagnosis, the impending loss of my bloom, my fertility, my youth.
I did succeed in growing it, somehow, grasping at the possibility of something thriving as I weathered the storm. I transferred it to a large planter in the backyard patio, and as I healed I watched it from my window, then from my porch, then finally on my slow walks around the garden. The green stem grew longer and higher; she blossomed into beauty. Yet her flower face bent humbly towards the ground, as if to acknowledge how overwhelming her glow was given the circumstances.
One afternoon’s nap, I awoke to the quiet of something gone wrong. The children burst into my room, their faces ashen. The basketball had fallen on her, her green spine had snapped, her glory gone. I fought all the forces linking me to her, that had given
me strength all those weeks. Now I separated myself from her. We grow, we flower, we decline. We rise, we set. We held a
ceremony. We danced, moving like blooming sunflowers to Rafi’s psychedelic “Sunflower, life-seeker, light-keeper, star-mirror” -
though I could hardly lift my leaf-like arms.
Now, months into my treatment, I have further withered. But somewhere above me she shines. And my friend is growing
me a peach tree from summer’s pit in her freezer.
My freckled friend grew it for me from seed. She brought it over, her face beaming like a sunflower, though she was merely holding a tiny pot of dirt with an even tinier green shoot. She gave me instructions as to how to care for it, laughing all the while, knowing that though I could beat her across the lake, this flower’s sweet bud had little chance of surviving in my care. Her gesture was itself a tentative seed of hope, glowing above the gloom of the purple storm of my diagnosis, the impending loss of my bloom, my fertility, my youth.
I did succeed in growing it, somehow, grasping at the possibility of something thriving as I weathered the storm. I transferred it to a large planter in the backyard patio, and as I healed I watched it from my window, then from my porch, then finally on my slow walks around the garden. The green stem grew longer and higher; she blossomed into beauty. Yet her flower face bent humbly towards the ground, as if to acknowledge how overwhelming her glow was given the circumstances.
One afternoon’s nap, I awoke to the quiet of something gone wrong. The children burst into my room, their faces ashen. The basketball had fallen on her, her green spine had snapped, her glory gone. I fought all the forces linking me to her, that had given
me strength all those weeks. Now I separated myself from her. We grow, we flower, we decline. We rise, we set. We held a
ceremony. We danced, moving like blooming sunflowers to Rafi’s psychedelic “Sunflower, life-seeker, light-keeper, star-mirror” -
though I could hardly lift my leaf-like arms.
Now, months into my treatment, I have further withered. But somewhere above me she shines. And my friend is growing
me a peach tree from summer’s pit in her freezer.