I so love this project! Conceived as the first of many installation pieces to compliment my Florilegia series, this casket full of forget-me-nots combines my love of gardening, antiques and art. Rooted in of the Victorian language of flowers where the message of the forget-me-not is, not surprisingly, “remember me”. This early wicker casket is as much a basket as it is a coffin. I love the underlying sentiment of this piece, the unending desire to be loved, to be remembered.

The casket of forget-me-nots perched in a patch of sun above the deep dark ravine.

Open Casket

Pushing up forget-me nots.

Arranging my forget-me-nots

The scale of this piece is really swallowed up by the landscape.

This Blue Belly Lizard likes what I’m doing!

So you may be wondering where exactly did I dig up a casket, and a wicker one at that? From another artist, of course, who had put it up for sale on Craig’s List.  I hadn’t even known they existed before doing a little light research. They are known as Victorian mourning caskets and would be used for wakes and for transport as they were light and affordable and I must say, good looking.

Anyway, It’s been the elephant in the middle of my studio all year storing odds and ends waiting for the forget-me-nots to come into bloom. And now that they have my desire as a gardener to see my garden thrive has been in conflict with my drive as an artist to see vision realized while the weather has been ignoring both sides of me.  But I did it! I got out my shovel and my boots and I lugged everything into the ravine behind my studio, all in the name of art. And why do all of this? There is such satisfaction in seeing an idea through, past the cluttered and private recesses of the mind and into the world where it can be shared in such a real and tangible way.