3-D CALLIGRAPHY
Created from the Worry Flowers series, each sculpture or installation begins as a 2-d calligraphy artwork. The flowers are cut, painted and molded to form sculptures and installations. From small works contained in a bell jar to installations that spread over a whole room, each is a unique collection of words chosen to convey specific ideas.
STUDIES
Mixed Media (Cut paper, Calligraphy, Spray Paint, Wire), Various sizes, 2023-4
A collection of sculptural works which evoke their own meaning based on the words they contain. Words like Infatuation, Distraction, Love, Duty, Tasks, Eternal, Security, and Anger come together in different arrangements.
BY ANY OTHER NAME
Mixed Media (Cut paper, Calligraphy, Spray Paint, Wire), 36'x 12', 2025
The conceptual work "By Any Other Name" was commissioned by the Jewish Museum of Vienna for the show "Black Jews, White Jews" which explores the question of skin color, the makeup of a people and our misconceptions around these. This floating sculpture is made of thousands of flowers, each fashioned from an Arabic name that used to be common in the Syrian Jewish community but that is now seldom used after it's relocation to the United States. It's about the way immigrants participate in their own erasure; the flowers fade in color and become transparent toward the top of the artwork.
Photos: Jewish Museum Vienna / © Tobias von Marillac
THE RIPPLE EFFECT
Mixed Media (Cut paper, Calligraphy, Spray Paint, Wire), 48X48X6.5", 2024. This work is composed of over 2,000 individual word flowers.
An outsized meditation on the quiet power of negative emotions. The work is composed of over 2,000 flowers formed from the words in Arabic for Anguish, Anger, Sorrow, Hope, Despair, Duty, Tasks, Infatuation and Distraction. The veneer of an attractive and cheerful bouquet is, on closer inspection, chaotic with sinister undertones. The work represents the way negative emotions can colonize our lives until they become who we are; as in life, ignoring or glossing over these emotions will ultimately result in rot, chaos, and situations we must resolve or address. Swirling eddies of different words and colors, the visual representations of these forces, jostle for position. Their spheres of influence refuse to be controlled or resolve with each other, pushing into each other's space and lifting off the picture plane. They form rabbit holes to get lost in. They can't be contained. The Ripple Effect calls attention to the dangers of gathering our problems around us and keeping them close. The flowers manifest the gentle balance between beauty and pain, benefit and drawback, and disguising hardship with falsity.
ON HOME AND DISAPPEARANCE
Embroidery, calligraphy, spray paint, wire, cut acetate, 15x40x60”, 2023, site specific commission for the Museo Ebraico, Lecce, Italy
The 2023 show “Altneueland” at the Museo Ebraico celebrates the 100th anniversary of Theodore Herzl’s book of that title, envisioning what a modern, sovereign homeland for the Jewish people could look like. The museum is dedicated to telling the story of the historic Jewish community of Lecce, Italy. Artists were asked to create site specific works based on this theme.
This work is about the consequences of not having a secure, permanent place in life. It references both the Jewish community of Lecce (who were expelled during the Inquisition in the 1500s) and Middle Eastern Jews, who were subjected to the same process in the last century. The flowers are made of Arabic words like acceptance, permancence, posterity and security, things these people did not have. Painted to match the stone of the museum (the community’s former synagogue), the flowers are intentionally left partially unpainted so they appear to be dissipating. This and the precarious way they are suspended in midiar evokes the fragile nature of our security, of lack thereof. Flowers are an ideal choice for reinforcing this fragility as they contain inherent tension, representing youth, hope and beauty but also impermanence and death. Embroidery hoops provide the framework, in a nod to the original Lecce community who were known during the Middle Ages for their work in the textile industry.
Even if Israel today isn’t perfect, its effect on people the world over is a force to be reckoned with and appreciated by those who know all too well what the lack of it can mean.
BOUQUET OF BURDENS
2022, Mixed Media (Cut paper, Calligraphy, Spray Paint, Wire), Private collection
The bouquet is reminscient of a long decayed vase of real flowers which the owner won’t get rid of, akin to the way people get stuck in a loop of retelling their issues and begin to self identify with them. Similar to the way in which a forgotten vase seems at first glance to be something positive you’d like kept around, these attractive and delicate works harbor sinister undertones in meaning and form. The words used here are
مفقود (mafqud) lost/wanting, هم (hoom) them/worry, رجا (raja) hope, وطاة (wata’ah) worry/weight/stress, مهام (mahum) tasks, and حمل (Hamel) pregnancy/burden.