Untitled #3 (Birth of Venus) - 2024 - Digital Photograph, crepe paper, dye, wire, gold, acrylic, pomegranate, pearls

When looking to iconic art of the past for inspiration, it is hard to avoid the omnipresence of The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli. An inescapable image seared into our culture and often exaggerated and appropriated from for content about sex, nudity, and defining the ultimate “babe”. But who is Venus, really? A woman born of the sea, older than the other gods, epitomizing love, passion, and divine intellect. In addition, she is seen as the embodiment of fertility, birth, lust, and virginity. She is pushed and pulled between nymphs and mortals alike, never quite fitting into the robes and roles that are cast upon her. The flowers in this arrangement - as in the painting - explore the tension that exists between sex and virginity: Myrtle, which signifies marriage in Christianity, and fertility and desire in Greco Roman; the light pink Sweet-Brier Rose represents love, and is tossed into the wind; Cornflowers, a contrasting symbol for sensuality and celibacy. Flowers, like women, contain dueling definitions in Western Culture, most-often used by men to tell their stories. Who is Venus but the modern woman, split into parts and expected to be whole?

Paper Flowers: Pink Briar Roses, Myrtle, Cornflowers, Sea Grass

"Of august gold-wreathed and beautiful

Aphrodite I shall sing to whose domain

belong the battlements of all sea-loved

Cyprus where, blown by the moist breath

of Zephyros, she was carried over the

waves of the resounding sea on soft foam.

The gold-filleted Horae happily welcomed

her and clothed her with heavenly raiment."