FLORESCENCE: March-May 2026

This show was the second of four parts representing a life cycle: Emergence, Florescence, Confluence, and Evanescence.

As a faithful devotee to our beautiful and burdened Earth, I welcome her rhythmic swings of retreat and unfurling. To be attentive to the flow of the seasons truly gives us all the knowledge we need; when to be still, when to begin, when to expand, when to turn ourselves fully on and when to be still and quiet again. As the light returns and the temperatures climb, dormancy abates and out of the rich damp soil green pierces the wet black surface. A beginning…again. She does this with patience, yet with a resilient force and energy. This is not a soft pastel moment, but one of fortitude and flow. This is the spring I love, not mild, not shy, but bold and heroic. This is the spring we all need. To rise up and be bold and grow towards the light.

Jesi Asagi

I work with paper for its fragility and versatility. There is something about leaving the paper almost entirely blank and hollow that I find interesting, like its story is yet to unfold. It is not a story of neglect or built by loss, but a being defining themselves, on their own terms, open and awake for what awaits them.

The repetition of wrapping, coiling the paper to create these shapes is a meditative practice. I am always surprised how the slightest adjustment, a mere millimeter, changes the form and narrative. I have referred to these pieces as horns, cones, shells, shapes and bodies, but they are beings to me.

Louisa Yarmuth

Louisa Yarmuth’s ceramics contain the rippling quality of petal and nest. Multiple pieces sit on wooden beams as well as hang on the wall like the flowers on a vine creeping up the garden wall. Her tubular vases are like the taut stems of tulip or daffodil.

AVA SWIFT

Ava Swift’s drawings are evocative of spring’s energy, growth and motion. Like that first buzz or hum of flight or that violent wind or rain storm of the season, these pieces are pulsing with action and force.

PARTICIPATION is imbued with the willingness to risk, to say yes to life, to participate. It was made in a single spontaneous gestural moment, not pre-planned nor analyzed in the making. The anticipation was present, the uncertainty of what might happen (or not happen) palpable. Like jumping into freezing cold waters- it was a willingness to leap into the unknown, into the making, and risk seeing what would emerge.

And what emerged has spoken so much to me.

The delight of She Who Plays.

The dance that She is.

The dialogue that She has become.

The reminder, to see what will emerge if we can hold space for the playing. Is this not life itself at its most celebratory- blooming into season, bursting into expression?

GUARDIAN OF THE THRESHOLD (to Hectate) is from a lecture given by Dr. Safron Rossi on Hecate and Hermes as guardian figures in Greek mythology. This piece is an offering to Hecate, who is a Greek Goddess of magic, crossroads, and the dark of the moon. Astrologer Demetra George notes one pre-Greek genealogy that leads us to Hecate’s birth at the beginning of time as a daughter of Nyx, Ancient Night. She presides over ritual, death, and the secrets of regeneration. It is Hecate who meets Persephone, welcoming and embracing her after she was abducted by Hades and later released from the underworld.

One of Hecate’s powers lies in her capacity to bear seeing what must be seen. As Clarissa Pinkola Estes says in her book, Women Who Run with the Wolves: “To look and to not look away” is a skill we all need more of in these times. On an inner level, Rossi describes Hecate as “a guardian figure of the depths of the unconscious” one who can protect and support the work of reclaiming and welcoming what needs returned to the light of the sun, our conscious awareness, within ourselves.

AWAKENING EARTH

To the mystery of a seed opening.

Even in her winter

Even in her slumber

The earth is alive

A matrix of belonging

Breathing us in, out.

From our belonging we breathe.