Origin of 'Red Rose'

The image is the medium.

This piece is made entirely of real rose petals, including the darkest sections, the areas appearing black. The idea of constructing an image from the things itself intrigued me. It’s one thing to depict a rose; it’s another to disassemble it, preserve it, and reconstruct it into a more enduring form. 

Some of the petals in Red Rose are over 15 years old. I’ve tested them under UV exposure and desert heat. The work has survived bumpy cross-country transport and extreme summer temperatures. 

The process was recursive: I photographed a rose, plucked it, preserved it, and embedded it into the piece. Then I repeated the process with hundreds more roses, deconstructing and rearranging tens of thousands of petals to recreate the original image.

I think of this as an evolved rose - one that is more potent and enduring than the original. 

In the language of recursion:

A = the original rose

B = decomposition, disassembly, entropy

C = reconstruction, emergence, design

A’ = the evolved rose

In this sense, Red Rose enacts the same logic seen In nature’s autocatalytic systems - recursive processes that generate complexity from within themselves. Life makes life. Thought makes thought. This rose made itself.