I am submitting this video as a work sample alongside my application to the SNW Luminary Residency in Paris. This is a work in progress, and ultimately will be shown as an installation with three large scale adjacent projections for the left, right, and center videos playing on a loop.

This three channel video explores my grandfather’s fascination with growing Clivia plants. It is made of a combination of camcorder footage, animation from silver gelatin prints, and chemigrams. Several years ago, before my grandpa lost his vision, he was an active participant in an online community of Clivia growers, sharing advice and exchanging photos with other enthusiasts. Over the last few years, as it has come time to pollinate the flowers, move the plants in a dark place for a dormant winter period, and harvest the seeds, he has directed me on the ins and outs of taking care of these plants.  I began recording this process with an old camcorder. The animated elements in the video are from that footage, transformed into negatives and printed in the darkroom, then scanned and put back together. I chose this medium, one that transforms HD video into grainy, black and white frames, in an attempt to capture a pervasive feeling I experience when gardening alongside my grandpa – a preemptive homesickness, a nostalgia for an impending future of caring for the plants that will likely live on when he is no longer here. This video is about the patience involved in caring for living beings, generational knowledge, and the cyclical nature of life.