Hello, Dear Flower
Hello, Dear Flower is what a bumblebee would say to a newly opened blossom. This collection of textile assemblages represents Molly’s own sacred refuge of floral abundance. Each piece is a bouquet bringing a heartfelt message of affection to the viewer. Molly constructs bouquets of perennials and insects that remind her of her mother and grandmother, both avid gardeners. The two of them share plants and swap seeds, helping each other to connect through the creation of natural sanctuaries that dazzle one with their colors. Being a cultivator too informs Molly’s art practice; tending, observing, and pressing flowers, and collecting natural plant dyes. And like a living garden, her work is a gesture that honors how gardens teach resilience through understanding the cyclical nature of the seasons and the activity of pollination.
Molly cherishes the opportunity to sit quietly, to pick a flower, thoroughly immersing herself in the aliveness of a garden; to remember the warm feeling of sun on her face, the perfumed scent wafting from a flower, and the sound of insects buzzing. Her intent is to create sculptures that feel essential and immediate, their textured materiality first experienced in the soul. These assemblages facilitate the act of experiencing the landscape through the body, stimulating the senses with frayed edges of canvas, painted tufts of felt, and colorful found materials. Evoking the cultivators of nature, fabric insects are a vehicle for imagining oneself into the world of flowers. Through cotton, wool, felt and canvas, these enveloping compositions transform Molly’s feelings into cheerful tangles of kaleidoscopic blooms and beneficial insects.
To invoke this sense of envelopment, Molly creates scenes and objects larger than life. In Hello, Dear Flower she invites viewers to enjoy the physical and textural qualities of the outdoors, encouraging one to consider his or her own connections to flowers, and more broadly with springtime itself. It is more important than ever that we nurture the relationships between humans and nature, to ground ourselves in the ways that gardens remind us to take comfort in stages of germination, growth, blooming, and pollination.