Having a Flower With You
2021
Having A Flower With You, 2021, screenprint on fabric, 22” x 22”
Having a Flower With You is a screenprint on fabric, produced for the Queer Ecology Hanky Project’s 2021 summer exhibition at the Women’s Studio Workshop. The print signaled a shift in my work, exploring the fragments of life during the Covid-19 pandemic. I was influenced by adrienne maree brown’s 2018 book Emergent Strategy, particularly with the influence of dandelions, growth, and distant gestures of love from friends. This print looks at the queer reciprocity from Frank O’Hara’s poem “Having a Coke With You,” envisioned here as “having a flower with you.” Additionally, as part of the Queer Ecology Hanky Project, I was inspired by the early 70s gay hanky code wherein gay men would signal to one another sexual desires and the roles they would play in those activities. In early iterations of the code, light blue indicated a desire for oral sex.
In this work, I am signaling my own desire to consume change, love, reciprocity, and transformation.
