Well Loved: The Greenhouse Effect
There’s a dilapidated greenhouse in Valley Forge National Park that sits empty and has been this way as long as I can remember. The window panes are no longer there, doors have been removed, and nature, as she always does, has claimed it as her own.
On my many walks around this part of Valley Forge, I noticed I am not the only one who stops to inspect the greenhouse. We naturally become drawn to places and things that have been forgotten, we build a story around it and conjure a time where it was brand new full of intended possibilities. This greenhouse may have housed plants that were passed along fro m one family member to another, herbs, favorited rose bushes, tropical plants that wouldn’t otherwise survive in our brisk and temperamental Pennsylvanian weather. Or was it a sitting room to host friends…an art studio surrounded by wondrous trees that saw many things.
The stories of this greenhouse’s life are endless. This kind of curiosity drives me in the work I like to do and honestly, it’s the only superpower I wish I had. To touch a structure and see its history and every moment that well-loved memories took place there.
This collection to me, in a very broad sense, feels like this greenhouse. Discovering beauty in the broken things, thoughtful structural details that pierce the part of your heart that makes you say…
“Ugh. This is so damn beautiful.”
It’s about building a story around bittersweet memories that we carry along through this weird, beautiful, exhausting, mesmerizing journey of being a human.
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Hear a little more about this collection through a recent interview with artist and friend, Cynthia Oswald.
