Welcome to my garden!

If you care to listen, I’d like to tell you how I got started on this particular venture.

In the spring of 2020, I was virtually completing my advertising and fine arts degrees. Lockdown had moved me home to New Orleans, and in the midst of so much uncertainty...the garden was thriving. Gaillardia (Blanket flower), coreopsis (Tickseed), agapanthus (African lily), and my favorite Purple Irises filled the front yard. I snapped some Polaroids.

My grandmother shared this yard with us from the other side of the duplex. A master gardener and landscape architect, “Nannie” passed six months before the pandemic reached the U.S. At the memorial service, I diligently photographed the butterfly garden she planted at the local library on my vintage Nikkormat. Three family members including myself, all tattoo virgins, got inked with her botanical sketches. 

When I learned that everything planted in the front yard, from sneaky bulbs to wild daisies, was by her hand...well, film just wasn’t enough anymore. My desire to preserve Nannie’s memory demanded new methods. An exploration in anthotypes, a natural photography technique, led to my first experiment in resin to preserve paper artwork.

Always looking to make functional, tactile, and stylistic work, I was quickly drawn to making earrings. I began hanging roses from a ladder and dipping them in resin, creating drips on the end of the buds by the time the goopy coating was finished setting.

Those first experiments with resin and roses date back to the spring of 2020. My techniques have evolved but I hope I never stop having impulsive ideas; some of my favorite work began with a happy accident.