Project Statement: Rite of Spring

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I was commissioned by a local health foundation to create photo-based projects involving two different populations serviced by the organization: the elderly and children. The goal was to involve members of each group to produce artwork that would hang on the walls of corporate headquarters.

For the elders of AGE, I secured a shopping cart full of fantastic flowers from a major supermarket (thank you HEB Austin!), various hats that I found at the Goodwill and showed up at the senior activity center with no exact plan in mind. I thought we would just play and see what happened.

Magically, happily, the elders, with a little help from our team, transformed the raw materials into stunning wearable art in celebration of the upcoming spring. Tucked in a corner of one of the offices, with a side door opened to create a rudimentary natural light “studio”, I spent the next few hours in collaboration with my senior muses creating these most colorful floral portraits.

Some elders were camera shy, some quite the opposite. One became my self-appointed art director, which was lovely because she was quite good at it (having modeled in her younger life, she knew all the tricks).

Most rewarding for me was to learn that the elders continued to wear their flower accessories for the remainder of the day. Later, the administration displayed the portraits on a wall at the activity center where the seniors could proudly show family and friends their homage to the Rite of Spring.
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