I am looking at the variety of shapes that Nature created with the DNA of the Gardenia species. Because I can't work with messy materials in the Herbarium itself, I am making models - like slow sketches in 3D - to bring into my studio and work with there.
Working with modelling wax feels both a little like life drawing sessions of intense observation and concentration, but also as a direct link to Victorian fore-mothers working with botanical illustrations and wax models. As such it feels both intensely old-fashioned and radical - an act of love for labour, non-alienated and for-itself, a celebration of spending slow time observing something small. Ignore bombastic eye catching masculine moneyed art, ignore gloss and trendy life in the fast lane, ignore that time is money, and that money is everything. Just enjoy a quiet moment of communication with matter.
Maybe this way of working was inspired by the people already working in the Herbarium - painstakingly piecing together a map of the botanical world, studying the details that makes a difference.