My ongoing series, Blue Garden is a body of work that honors the garden my parents created with 30 years of hard work and love. As a pandemic friendly activity, I often wandered through my parent’s garden full of abundant greenery and flowers. I found comfort in the uncertain time, embraced by the garden’s beauty and the unfolding of nature’s lifecycle. One day, I was struck by the thought that the garden will not always be here. It will not always belong to my family. Like all things, the garden is fleeting. At that moment, I felt a strong urgency to freeze its brilliance for eternity.
As I share the cyanotype prints, viewers will see Georgia’s natural specimens through a form of photography nearly two centuries old. The handmade photographic process, which uses no camera, film or computer, has much in common with a garden. It is the sun’s light that creates the deep blue images in the same way that light grows plants. Water washes and strengthens the cyan print to form strength and archival power not unlike the way water supports nature. A labor of love must go into making the prints – the same dedicated care that goes into weeding, planting, and tending a garden. Finally, many of the prints from Blue Garden are topped with a thin layer of encaustic wax, which I like to imagine was made by the same bees that pollinated the garden’s plants and flowers.
