Foxgloves

2007–21

The Foxglove series began in 2007. The first bronze, wall-mounted flowers were shown in Sapiens in the Kerlin Gallery and later became freestanding.

The flowers grow in the land around the studio. They are picked and dipped in wax and five bells are removed and replaced with five finger-tips. The wax flowers are then cast in bronze using the lost-wax system. The fingers mimic the bells and merge with the plant. Each flower is unique as the fabrication requires extreme delicacy.

Digitalis Purpurea (2005)

A web based project for DIA New York. Click here to view it.

The foxglove digitalis purpurea is a tall, multi-belled flower that grows in the countryside in summer. Children are warned not to stick their fingers in the bells as if licked the poison could cause them to go blind.

The drug digitalis is extracted from the foxglove flower and has been used by herbalists as a medicine for centuries. It is still used as a drug to treat heart ailments. If over-prescribed it can cause altered vision where the patient begins to see everything in blue.

In Digitalis Purpurea two circles appeared on the screen and by moving the mouse images became blue. It was a gentle interplay of a child innocently speaking facts about the foxglove flower, both scientific and folkloric.