Sexual Flowers series: Wet Iris Opening

Sexual Flowers series. ‘Wet Iris Opening’. 2022.

Sexual Flowers came about as my love for gardening grew. When I have lived between gardens and on decades of dog walks and bike rides, I also have taken advantage of the flowers of others all around me. I have thousands probably, and I have lost thousands by now too too, but so it goes. I am posting them here as I find them.

I cannot even express my gratitude to two wonderful neighbors who taught me how to plant a garden and heirloom seeds in one morning in my triangular yard on the corner of 31st and Lock Street, Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood. They gave me a freedom and a power I never could have imagined. I went from growing flowers to food. I learned so much and I developed a deep appreciation for the beauty of flowers.

My favorite architect, Louis Sullivan created and most ornate and intricate terra cotta and wrought ironwork on the facades of his many beautiful buildings around the city. I was stopped in my tracks by one while exploring the city, once discovered I would seek them out and stare into them with awe and worship. These intricate details were often stylized flowers, some geographic in design, a kind of sacred geometry. Others were highly erotic in a manner that to my teenage mind could only be described as sexual, maybe even pornographic. I went to the library to study him in the days before the internet, and later in a biography I was gifted, these erotic flowers were never mentioned as such, but years later one mayor did tear down quite a number of his buildings, so perhaps it was some unspoken profanity? Is it spoken now I wonder, you know, besides by me here in my memories of being an 18 year old?

Anyway, growing flowers gave me a new appreciation for them and their delicate beauty, their differences. even the subtle differences of flowers of the same kind in a group. I thought back to those erotic terra cotta and iron designs with a new understanding. And without setting out to, I began to try to capture the sexuality of flowers in an ongoing series of flower photos, often extreme close-ups. I speak more about this in an upcoming protect, to be released this fall. Ooohhh a secret!