A Life With Roses
Living in the Willamette Valley, roses are a consistent part of life. Pink wild rose shrubs pop up in fields, local parks feature elaborate rose gardens, and a rainbow of cultivated roses dot almost every yard.
Roses Daily
It is barely the new year, and some of our roses already have new growth. To protect them from heavy frosts, we have been covering the beds in almost a foot of compost (horse dung & sawdust). In a few weeks, we’ll be planting bare roots and transplanting overgrown wild rose bushes. Basically there is something to do with roses every month of the year.
Rose Story
This collage celebrates living with roses. I think of it as an elaborate concept map, pieced together from things I have collected and made. First, I went through my digital photo albums and found a variety of rose pictures taken over the years. I printed and fussy cut the images, pasting them into my note pad with a glue stick. I added other large elements, including rose fabrics, a pressed rose, paint chips, and rose ephemera. This left white space “zones” and I started filling each with little snippets of what roses mean to me. This included writing in pen and sketching in pencil, pen, and watercolor. I kept filling in the spaces until it felt balanced and representative. The completed piece is a personal exhibit in time, representing my view of roses.
