In 2007, while walking down the street on a rainy Fall day and noticing sidewalks covered with leaves, it occurred to me that the damp, resilient surface of a recently fallen leaf might be able to hold the image of a small, circular copper plate I had recently finished etching. Soon afterwards, I began to experiment with printing on fallen leaves collected from the streets and parks around Brooklyn. I created an initial series of single and multiple leaf print arrangements using circular copper plate etchings and Plexiglas plates in various combinations to print etchings, monotypes and monoprints directly on the leaves. Several of the arrangements contained leaves with no prints on them at all and some I attached to small branches to create free-standing sculptures and hanging leaf mobiles.

In 2008, I continued collecting leaves, printing monotypes on paper and directly on leaves, printing soft ground etchings of leaves on leaves, and continuing to create new leaf arrangements and three-dimensional pieces. By the Spring of 2009, I was also collecting hundreds of Samara seeds produced by budding Maple Trees. I spent the Fall of 2009 gathering leaves, branches and seeds, this time in preparation for the creation of my first installation in the window of a Brooklyn Gallery.

I am interested in how using leaves and seeds to make prints on paper removes the plants from their usual context and imbues them with a permanence that does not exist in the natural world. I use multiple plates and colors, along with carefully executed arrangements, endeavoring to make intricate, multi-layered images and patterns that transcend the singular identity of the individual leaf or seed. Yet, somehow I am preserving the memory of each plant’s passage through the world, even while interrupting nature’s intent.

The transformation of the detritus of trees into art objects fascinates me. I use the botanist’s method of drying and flattening these plant materials in order to preserve them, but they are not chemically treated. Dried plants can last for hundreds of years, but they have a limited life span. Eventually, the leaves I have used will decompose, but the decomposition is designed to be an ongoing and evolving feature of the artwork and functions as a metaphor for life as well as for art.

By using leaves, branches and seeds that have fallen from a tree, I endeavor to capture a moment in the growth and life cycle of a tree and to convey its transient beauty. It is perhaps this ongoing transformation through the inexorable passage of time, this mirroring of life, that has the greatest effect on me.

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