Plant Messengers
botanical contact prints
My goal is to heal ancestral separation from place. I interact and listen to plants around me and develop relationships with them as family and collaborators.
This makes the process of making the prints as important as the final products.
This practice, which is not completely controllable, starts when I wander the property picking leaves, stems, and flowers that call out to me.
Some are familiar friends that I have worked with before and some are new that I had not noticed before.
It continues when I lay the fresh plant material on the mordanted and wet fabric and compose an image. I then roll it up and tie it into a bundle to fit into the steamer. An hour or so later, I unroll the warm bundle, peel off the plants, and see what magic is revealed.
All marks and shapes come directly from plant pigments which are embedded into the fabric. Through multiple layers of printing, the plant forms contribute their unique marks, textures, colors that become an abstract image. The images are dynamic; as biodegradable members of the environment, they continue to change over time. Watch them, they are alive.
