MOURNING FLOWERS (sites + collection)

Mourning Flowers is an art project that brings awareness to the ripple effects of trauma and fear that communities sustain after acts of violence. It uses the flowers and empty sleeves that once wrapped them left as offerings at spontaneous memorials to bridge the disconnect between violence and the human response to it.

Paris, France, November 13-16, 2015

The seeds of this work started eight years prior on November 13, 2015, when I was sitting with a friend at a café in Paris. After we ordered a glass of wine, terrorists began to shoot into cafés across the city, the Bataclan nightclub, and bombed a stadium killing 130 people and wounding close to 400 more. It was a terrifying experience, especially being on the streets of a city and language foreign to me. Our Airbnb was a block away from Bataclan and we photographed and wrote for days, walking the city and watching the spontaneous memorials grow by the hour. Only a handful of flower bouquets the morning after, but soon they grew by the hundreds and thousands. The city’s collective grief made visible. I was startled by how moving it was to hear teenagers singing “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” at the Place de la République and see the mounds of flowers, candles and ephemera left as offerings. 

5 minute movie excerpt from Are you really my friend? The Documentary by Robin Greenspun / Culture Dog Films

Lewiston, Maine, October 28-December 5, 2023

Tragically, my hometowns of Lewiston-Auburn, Maine are now among many communities around the country that have been devastated by mass shooting events. I have felt an incredible responsibility as a local artist whose work and practice are rooted in social connections to help my community express its grief and loss. When a shooter took eighteen lives and forced our cities into lockdown, I was working on a project for Maine MILL (Museum of Innovation, Learning and Labor) in Lewiston as part of my larger ephemera project. In the initial aftermath of the shootings, I documented daily the spontaneous memorials at Just-In-Time Recreation and Schemengee’s Bar and Grille that sprung up until we brought the ephemera back to Maine MILL to archive on December 5th.

The finished photographed flowers are here.

New York City, September 11-12, 2024

As part of my research on sites of mass violence and how communities interact publicly with memories of traumatic human loss, in September 2024 I sought guidance from the Collections team at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. During my time circulating the Memorial with them, I learned how much care they invest in documenting and preserving physical tributes objects left at the Memorial pools and how they catalogue these offerings in connection with the victims of 9/11. While on site, I also witnessed family and friends placing individual flower stems in the names of their loved ones that are carved into the pools retaining walls as well as flower bouquets. Although flowers are perishable, photographing them perpetuates these elegiac gestures. Many thanks to Jan Ramirez, Alex Drakakis, David Burnhauser, and Stephanie Schmeling for the guidance and support.

The finished photographed flowers are here.

Boston, April 2025

As part of my research on the ways communities respond and heal after mass violence, I tracked down Diane Valle, the woman behind Marathon Daffodils, a non-profit that formed after the April 15, 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. In September of 2013, she organized volunteers and fundraised the planting of 100, 000 daffodils in eight communities along the marathon route. In the consecutive years, she flanked the city with 5 daffodils in a pot, 2500 pots the first year and growing to 7,000 this year (!). After the marathon, the pots are collected and the daffodils replanted in Paul Revere Park and the Esplanade along the Charles River. In 2020, when the Marathon was cancelled because of Covid, the pots were donated to first responders and hospitals (also recipients in previous years).

I’m working on a time lapse photograph of a pot blooming (coming soon!) and last Friday, I photographed volunteers picking up the pots and distributing them though out Boston. When the pots were all picked up, Diane and I walked around for a bit, and she pointed out businesses that started to plant daffodils without her asking. She hopes that more people will step forward to continue this tradition without her.

It got me thinking on the drive back to Maine, what if every community affected by violence, took Diane’s lead and turned their pain into planting?

Mourning Flowers is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Mourning Flowers must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.