"I photographed and collected specimens from over 150 plants in the herb garden at Shaker Heritage Society. The Society is located at the site of the Shakers’ first settlement in the United States, known as Watervliet. Its herb garden pays homage to the significance of the Shakers’ herb cultivation, and seed and medicinal herb industries. I developed a series of works on paper and canvas with plants collected from the Shaker herb garden. Their compositions were based upon nineteenth-century Shaker ‘gift’ drawings that were complex, divinely inspired revelations of spiritual perfection, often symmetrical and incorporating botanical elements.

I often work with the cyanotype process, an early cameraless photographic process that was invented in 1842, the same time period the Shaker gift drawings were being created. For my works on paper and linen, the unique blue and white prints are just the beginning and then I draw and paint in many layers utilizing watercolor, gouache and ink onto thick sheets of cotton paper or fabric. The Prussian blue created through the cyanotype process is significant to Shaker culture in that it was considered celestial and meeting houses often featured blue to be connected with heaven.
 

Through the use of the cyanotype medium, I manipulate pressed plants along with intricately cut photographic negatives. Given that sunlight starts the exposure process with cyanotype chemistry, I carefully arrange elaborate compositions at night and utilize long exposures under natural or UV light to create the final prints. Each selected flower or plant is preserved through a pressing process in which I dissect and shape each form—akin to a specimen from a natural history museum—and then lay everything out in massive flat files in my studio. For plants that are too bulbous to press, I photograph them from many angles and create transparency negatives that are printed along with the physical objects placed on the paper. There is a directness to the link between botany and the cyanotype photogram technique because of the physical plant/object leaving its mark. I am interested in creating objects that feel both beautiful and mysterious. Each of my works recall something familiar yet slightly outside of time."

Read the full interview here.