Larissa Blokhuis
  • Home
    • Interactive
    • Jewellery
  • Media
  • Contact + Info
    • CV
    • Bio
  • Events
  • Blog
  • Huisje Gallery

F. excelsior, by Katrina Vera Wong

19/1/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
When people ask what I do, I tell them I make flowers.  I call them Frankenflora.

In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “What If You Slept,” a “strange and beautiful flower” is plucked from a dream in heaven and brought back to our waken world.  Years after I first read this poem, after I volunteered at an herbarium, after I became fascinated with the mutability of orchids, after I lost my father, did I begin to understand just how strange and beautiful that flower was.  In my grief, I was plunged into a frenzy of piecing together parts of dead flora to create—or replicate—Coleridge’s poetic flower.

I consult the study of botany, practice ikebana, and experiment with the concept of hybridization, using sections of pressed or dried plants to construct a flower, like Dr. Frankenstein and his monster.  That hybrid speciation is more commonly found in plants than animals makes them the ideal media for this practice, so Frankenflora (with its variations given binomial names) may represent a species that is perhaps not altogether impossible.

We are born into this world the product of two genetic codes, but along the way we pick up bits of the people we love and bits of the things we marvel at, and in the end we leave as a whole greater than the sum of these parts.  It is my hope that Frankenflora might be a balm for those who have also lost loved ones, that they might be a part of the departed to occupy the void left behind.

The Frankenflora won’t die again but they’re still fragile.  In events of loss, we have to be gentle in remembering whole lives, and be careful not to forget them.

www.furiebeckite.com/

0 Comments
    Sometimes Dutch words are hard to pronounce based on spelling!

    Pronunciation:
    Huisje Gallery is a small space to see new work.

    Hanging:  artworks will hang 15 cm from the wall

    Wall space: 
    H90 x 122W cm

    Plinth: 
    H108 x W57 x D26 cm

    Artists must provide a written statement (1 page max), which will be displayed with the work.

    Visitors will be provided guidelines to give the artist constructive critique.

    This is intended to help the artist learn about their work in a friendly, no-pressure space.  As well, it is intended to build arts literacy and strengthen our community.
    Support my work:
    Picture

    Archives

    July 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    October 2018
    September 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.