Plant Matter, installation of plush flora made from naturally dyed fabric (using plant matter collected from the MUN Botanical Garden), 2018.

Plant Matter is a body of work made as a part of Creation with the Garden, an artist in residence initiative made possible by the MUN Botanical Garden and the Grenfell Visual Arts Program. The body of work considers the hierarchies and classification systems present within a university garden, and the decisions that go into organizing plants into thematic sub-gardens within the space.

With Plant Matter I wanted to create my own sub-garden within the framework of the university Botanical Garden and populate it with flora of my own invention. My large plush plants are made from fabric dyed using plant matter collected from the Botanical Gardens back in the fall of 2017. Each of my plants contains DNA from both native and non-native plants; traces of flowers, ferns, lichen, mushrooms, soil, bark, and berries; they are part natural, and part man-made – defying categorization, and existing both inside and outside the limits of the thematic sub-gardens. Another side of this work is a consideration of the fantastical, and the potential for nature to exist not only outside of the confines of classification, but also outside the confines of reality