Fake Plants

At the onset of the pandemic, I began making artificial plants using materials like discarded cardboard boxes, paper packaging from food products, disposable medical masks, cardboard toilet paper tubes, ping pong balls, sewing pins, toothpicks, and leftover craft supplies. In the resulting series titled Fake Plants (2021), which exist both as sculptures and as photographs of them, my longstanding methodology of working with mundane materials close at hand intersects with my interest in “the natural.” I harvested cast-off materials from my home, my studio, and a construction site in the neighborhood and transformed them into multifarious plant forms. Fake Plants are based on recollection and invention rather than accurate representations of existing species. Although these works take the form of peculiar flora and fauna belonging to unexplored or imagined landscapes, I hope they ultimately bring viewers closer to the overlooked, familiar matter that constitutes their domestic lives.