Wild Flowers: A collage-based installation

In 2024, I was a fellow at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts: convening with dozens of creatives on 400 acres in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was a time of change, as well as connection, and in the wake of the 2024 election, we drew together organically like so many blooms and branches persisting around us. Inspired by these big personalities and the symbiotic ways we worked, I painted kraft paper expressionistically in vibrant gouache, then invited a group to collage with it together in my studio. Drawn to stark forms, abstracted views of our identities and the way they mimicked the nature around us, I created a series to imagine our diversity as part of a bouquet held together by a shared love of art. For Collage-O-Rama 2025, I transformed the work into 3-D forms mounted bursting across a brick wall and dangling in windows, vibrant and free, an offering at the altar of mixed media that reflects the multifarious beauty of collage and all the people it draws together.