Rosaceae | 2015
displacement/thisplacement, curated by Israel Garcia
Paragraph Gallery | Kansas City, MO


Roseacea began as an experimental performance; an exercise to understand my interest in collecting natural material as part of my art practice and a challenge I constructed to isolate the act of collecting. I selected a highly public site at a busy bus-stop and attempted to collect every last fruit from the center tree in a line of three ornamental crab-apple trees. During this time I visited with interested passerby about the tree, the weather, my intentions, etc. Because the gesture was about the act of collecting, I put the material aside.

 

Years later, I found that the tree had been destroyed due to construction of the roadway and sidewalk it once inhabited and I was compelled to revisit the fruits which had dried and were stored in my studio. What was once an act of collection became one of preservation and remembrance. The grid-like weaving (or drawing) represents my memory of the portion of the tree I had stripped. I was aware of how many times each berry passed through my hands throughout the process. I became obsessed with preserving what was left of this tree, saving and storing even the smallest fragments: the broken bits of berry, fallen stems and twigs collected on my studio floor, dust from drilling a tiny hole in each fruit. The piece is an allegory of loss and relates to the sentiment we attach to objects and belongings of loved ones after they are gone. Thus, the original performance and the making of this object were an act of knowing.