Artist Statement

 The Grandmother Tree, 2020-2021

Photographs from Home

Artist Statement

Grandmother Tree in Winter, January 2021

Even though I see glorious trees right outside my bedroom window everyday, I had to ask myself, "do I really see them?" That is, bear witness to their transformations over a year and study the change in their outward appearance, shape, and expression as the light falls across them over the year? There, before me, right in my own backyard sits a magnificent plantaine orientale, otherwise known as an Old World Sycamore. 

The Old World Sycamore was planted sometime in the late 16th to mid 17th century and had lived through the rise and fall of empires, the Hundred Years War which was fought right here in Normandy, the French Revolution, and two World Wars-- the last of which saw German tanks break through the outer walls surrounding the hamlet and lay siege to the property where the Grandmother Tree stands. And now, she lives through the global pandemic. 

During la confinement (or lockdown), I didn't want to just look at the Grandmother Tree, I wanted to see the Grandmother Tree in a way that I hadn't imagined before. Over the last eighteen months of  lockdown/release, I turned my gaze and camera to documenting the transformations of the Grandmother Tree from one season to the next, What I discovered astonished me. 

This portfolio contains thirty-two archival pigment prints, eight from each of the four seasons: Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. Each subset illustrates the nascent beginnings to the transitory stage of each season that cycles into the next iteration and rise of the Grandmother Tree new identity. Each photograph is taken with love and respect for this amazing being who has given me so much over the course of these last eighteen months of the pandemic. This tree has been my ballast, and strength. A model for survival and resiliency, as well as beauty and grace.