If I Had a Flower for Every Time I Thought of You...I Could Walk Through My Garden Forever.
If I Had a Flower for Every Time I Thought of You, I Could Walk Through My Garden Forever, 2021
96 x 84 x 16 in
This sculpture is made primarily of disassembled artificial flowers that I have collected from leaf piles and litter-filled trash bags that accrue in the Oakland Cemetery on the Cranston/ Providence line in Rhode Island. In this cemetery, grass grows tall, headstones are pushed over, trenches are covered with rotting plywood, and litter collects. Privately owned, there is no discernible routine maintenance of the grounds provided. Despite the overall neglect of the property, gravesites are visited frequently- as evidenced by overflowing shrines with slender glass candles, heart-shaped wreaths, bouquets of fake flowers, stuffed animals, and family photographs. When I used to live nearby, I would walk the grounds to read the tombstones and collect stray flowers from these arrangements that were blown off of the graves and mixed in with the dusty long grass and tangles of prickers. I had a lot of mixed feelings and questions about the practice of commemorating someone's life with what could be construed as litter leading to blight, but the more time I spent there walking there, the more I came to empathize with this act - thinking of it as instead as leaving a lasting token of love.