“The very act of loving and possessing often diminishes, even kills, the raw beauty that drew us in the first place. No realm better analogizes this than that of nature. In the residual vibrancy of cut flowers or the hush of pinned insects coexist the beauty afforded by life and its demise begun by the very act of its collection.

Memorializing in porcelain the transience: of beauty’s climaxes, of possession of one’s beloved, and of life itself; reiterates the fragility of it all. Even interest’s gaze is transient. The irrelevant detail or notional blurs capture the way we look at the objects of our adoration: focusing here (not there), seeing clearly this (not so much that).

How does it feel to be an object of desire and what does that experience look like? Can interest be kept and the fate of being forgotten thwarted? All the while wilting and dying? Underlying a playful examination of these questions is a sincere query into the dynamics of life and death, beauty and its loss, collector and collected [possession and its objects], humans and their interactions with nature.”
– Nicole Stewart, Charlotte Amalie, January 2024