I am pleased to release The Garden Within, a set of eight woodblock and screen prints. This body of work expresses an innate and spiritual connection to the world around me, one which I move through and experience as a garden in my mind. It is an active relationship, a conversation between myself, the landscape, and those who have created and tended to it. The spaces I find the most dialogue are ones in which the hand of the people is clearly evident, characterized by hand built structures, repainted too many times, and the natural architecture that is inherent in these places.
These spaces are loved by their gardeners, and thus express that love back out. A traditional garden requires lots of attention and love, the same is true even in these more urban spaces, both of which sing when they are tended by their human inhabitants. The life of the plants, overgrowing the human structures, brings mother earth into the conversation reminding us of the natural garden that we can still remember.
These gardens have space to breathe, and they are places of respite. This respite is what allows us to connect to our deeper humanity, recognizing that we are a part of the world, not outside it. To be a gardener is to tend. To garden is to make space and to encourage growth, giving to the landscape and our communities what they in turn give us. This is the core of the relationship between humans and our world, a relationship that is so necessary in times of over consumption and materiality.
This body of work aims to express the landscape that tends to us as we tend to it. The places are not exact places, but rather created ones which express the hand of people in the landscape. It is work that aims to remind us of the ways in which we are part of the landscape and its community, and encourage us to appreciate the beauty in what might seem to be very normal or overlooked places.