shaped by water

My current project, Shaped by Water, considers flowers as forms that are briefly held and then returned, using their transience to explore loss, remembrance, and continuity. This emphasizes that while individual flowers are ephemeral, the garden's cycle continues. The creation and documentation of these floral ice vessels is used as a way of thinking through absence, presence, and tribute. Constructed from flowers and water, they exist only briefly, holding form long enough to be witnessed before yielding to change. As the ice dissolves, color shifts, structures soften, and what was carefully shaped is gradually returned to its surroundings. The project draws on long-standing cultural uses of flowers as offerings—gestures made during moments of loss, transition, and remembrance—where beauty and brevity coexist. The process honors what has passed while affirming continuity and change. Sources of inspiration include Dutch still-life painting, nineteenth-century German Biedermeier and folk arrangements, and Japanese ikebana.