Garden Preserves

Anyone who gardens understands how meditative weeding can be. If you’re a cook, perhaps you get a similar feeling chopping onions or washing the dishes after preparing a big meal. The repetitious nature of tending to a space and preparing for the future is definitely an act of delayed gratification, but it is also a reward in itself. It’s transportation from the present into the possibilities of what could be.

My photos are contemplative, but also repetitive. The patterns are an homage to the more time-consuming (and also repetitious) arts: sewing, fabric making, weaving. They were taken with natural light and in a craftwork style, a focus on physical space, color and the beauty of natural objects.

Pictured are fruits and vegetables that grew throughout the summer. They are the products of consistent watering, fertilizing and the labor needed to clear a space for them to come into being. I often stood in the garden at sunset, staring, studying each petal of a zinnia, tracking bees floating from bud to bud. Photographing these garden specimens is an attempt to preserve my own wonder, something I too often cannot afford to do with the busyness of life.