From lemons to leaves: a long practice in hope

My research resides in the inherited secrets buried within a home – whispers of stories and old wives’ tales passed down from previous generations of women protecting those forthcoming. I examine the weight of our worries and build objects that offer protective storage for those seeking lightness. Accompanied with lore inherited from relatives, I study domestic practices like gardening, place-making and caretaking to inform the concepts; and pull from imagery of decorative arts, herb gardens, and apothecaries.

Women have historically been placed in domestic roles and dismissed, so we’ve learned to use inherited skills to survive and protect one another. We share the unspoken rules and favors of the spaces we inhabit. We whisper warnings of the dangers around us – those that grow in the grass or sleep next to us at night. We share the seeds to grow tea when clinics will no longer offer care. We swap recipes to calm symptoms when the doctors don’t believe our pain. We walk each other home in silence when the night is too dark. The communal whispers, often dismissed as fruitless gossip, offer a veil of care, a warning, a camouflage to hide ourselves in plain sight. I activate secrecy as a tool for survival in considering the physical act of burying, covering, and hiding as a form of resistance.

Working with the permanence of clay, I build ornate ceramic jars and furniture to conceal items commonly used by myself, and generations of women before me, that may now or one day be illicit: birth control pills, abortifacient herbs, recipes, books. The floral patterns protect the sculptures by harnessing the usual dismissal of decoration and femininity throughout history; like arsenic hiding in painted green leaves of old wallpaper or poisonous plants flourishing amongst the wildflowers. I offer my inherited secrets and stories for future generations.